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university  of 

Connecticut 

libraries 


BOOK    973.3.T728   v.  1  _  ••  \ 


TREVELVAN    #    AMERICAN   REVOLUT.ON 


3  T153  00051^52  2 


THE 

AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 

Part  I.     1 766-1 776 


THE 


AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 


Part  I.     1 766-1 776 


BY  THE  RIGHT  HON. 


SIR   GEORGE   OTTO   TREVELYAN,   BART. 

AUTHOR  OF   "  THE  LIFE  AND   LETTERS  OF  LORD   MACAU  LAY  " 
AND  "THE  EARLY   HISTORY  QF  CHARLES  JAMES   FOX" 


NEW    YORK 
LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

LONDON  AND  BOMBAY 
1899 


V  •  \ 


Copyright,  1898,  by 
LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 

ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


1^)00 


J.  S.  Cushins  &  Co.  -  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

The  author  of  this  volume  is  aware  that  an  expecta- 
tion exists,  among  those  who  have  read  "  The  Early- 
History  of  Charles  James  Fox,"  that  he  would  carry  on 
the  account  of  that  statesman's  life  from  the  point  at 
which  he  dropped  it  eighteen  years  ago.  When  the 
consideration  of  the  project  was  seriously  approached, 
it  became  evident  that  the  difficulties  of  writing  a  polit- 
ical biography,  as  distinguished  from  a  political  history, 
were  in  this  case  insuperable.  The  story  of  Fox, 
between  1774  and  1782,  is  inextricably  interwoven  with 
the  story  of  the  American  Revolution.  That  immense 
event  filled  his  mind,  and  consumed  his  activities  ;  while 
every  circumstance  about  him  worth  relating  may  find 
a  natural  place  in  the  course  of  the  narrative  which 
bears  upon  it.  During  that  part  of  the  great  drama 
which  was  enacted  within  the  walls  of  Parliament,  Fox 
was  never  off  the  stage  ;  and,  when  there,  he  played  a 
conspicuous,  and  (as  time  went  on)  confessedly  the 
leading,  part.  What  was  done  and  spoken  at  Westmin- 
ster cannot  be  rightly  explained,  nor  the  conduct  of 
British  public  men  fairly  judged,  without  a  clear  and 


VI  PREFACE 

reasonably  detailed  account  of  that  which  occurred  con- 
temporaneously beyond  the  Atlantic.  The  story  of  the 
times  in  which  Fox  lived  and  wrought  has  hitherto  been 
told  as  it  presented  itself  to  the  author  ;  and  he  trusts 
that  his  telling  of  it  may  interest  others  sufficiently  to 
encourage  him  in  continuing  it. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 

Retirement  of  Charles  Fox  from  Office 
His  Political  Career  apparently  mined 
His  Debts  discharged 
Character  of  his  Correspondence 

Letters  to  his  Mother 

Deaths  in  the  Holland  Family 

The  Ministers  whom  Fox  had  left  . 

The  Rockingham  Whigs 

Fox's  Way  of  Life  and  Choice  of  Friends 

Advent  of  the  American  Question  . 


PAGE 
I 

2 

5 
7 

15 
17 
19 
23 

24 

27 


CHAPTER   II 

Effect  of  the  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  on  American  Sentiment  28 
Forces  in  British  Politics  which  worked  against  a  Permanent 

Reconciliation           ........  29 

Fall  of  Rockingham ;  Townshend's  Custom  Duties          .  31 

Protests  from  America ;  their  Reception  by  the  Government   .  34 

Troops  sent  to  Boston 37 

Causes  of  the  Want  of  Acquaintance  with  America  which  pre- 
vailed in  England 3& 

Difficulties  of  Communication •  3& 

The  Colonial  Governors          .         .         •         .         •         •  41 

Want  of  Sympathy  between  the  Rulers  and  the  Ruled     .         .  42 

Sudden  Increase  of  Luxury  in  Great  Britain    ....  45 

Fighting  Qualities  of  our  Aristocracy 51 

vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


Impression  produced  on  the  Young  French  Nobles  by  the  So 

ciety  in  America       .... 
Contrast  with  Europe      .... 
The  Middle  Class  in  Great  Britain  . 
Education  in  America     .... 
Eton  and  the  English  Universities  . 

John  Adams 

Benjamin  Franklin           .... 
Other  Leaders  of  the  American  Revolution 
George  Washington        .... 
Loyalty  of  Americans  to  the  King  . 
Their  Attachment  to  the  Mother  Country 
Their  Admiration  of  Lord  Chatham 
Part  played  by  the  Colonies  in  Chatham's  War 
Social  Conditions  in  America  . 
American  Women 


PAGE 

52 
54 
58 
60 

63 

66 

72 
81 

83 
86 

88 

90 

90 

96 

97 


CHAPTER   III 

Dangers  of  the  Ministerial  Policy 

Lawyers  in  America 

The  Non-importation  Agreement    .                           • 
Political  Offenders  in  America  made  liable  to  be  tried  in  Eng 
land 

Boston  occupied  by  the  Troops 

Ill-feeling  between  Royal  and  Provincial  Military  Officers 
Hostility  to  the  Army  among  the  Townsmen  ;  and  the  Cause 

of  it 

The  Boston  Massacre 

Acquittal  of  Captain  Preston 

An  Opportunity  of  Pacification  lost ;  Grafton  and  the  Tea-duty 

Manufactures  in  Great  Britain  and  America     . 

How  the  Revenue  Laws  were  observed  at  Home  and  in 

Colonies  ...•••••• 

Admiral  Montagu ;  Affair  of  the  Schooner  Gaspee  . 


the 


100 
102 
104 

105 

108 
no 

112 
119 
121 
122 
125 

127 
132 


CONTENTS  ix 


Payment  of  American  Judges  by  the  Crown ;   Massachusetts 

objects  to  the  Proposal 134 

The  East  India  Company ;   Resistance  to  the  Importation  of 

the  Tea   .  135 


CHAPTER  IV 

Shock   produced   on   British  Opinion   by  the   Tidings   from 

America  ..........  139 

Elimination  from  the  Cabinet  of  all  Independent  Elements ; 

Granby's  Death        ........  140 

Pliability  of  the  Ministers  ;  LordGower;  Lord  Barrington      .  142 

Lord  Dartmouth      .........  144 

Inertness  of  the  Opposition 153 

Burke's  Activity  and  Energy ;    Dr.  Markham ;    Lord  George 

Germaine         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .156 

The  Whigs  contemplate  a  Secession        .         .         .         .         .158 

Burke  and  Parliamentary  Reform    .         .         .         .         .         .162 

The  Absentee  Tax .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  163 

Chatham  in  the  House  of  Lords       .         .         .         .         .         .165 

Franklin  in  London         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .167 

The  Massachusetts  Letters 169 


CHAPTER   V 

The  Government  resolve  to  make  an  Example  of  Boston 
Proceedings  in  Parliament ;  the  Boston  Port  Bill     . 
The  Bill  for  Altering  the  Government  of  Massachusetts 
Intolerant  Conduct  of  the  Majority  . 
Self-effacement  of  the  Opposition    .... 
The  Part  taken  by  Charles  Fox       .... 
The  Bills  are  passed 

Effect  of  the  News  in  Boston 

Blockade  of  the  Harbour         ..... 
Proposal  for  a  Congress  ...... 


175 
177 

179 

182 

184 

186 

189 

191 
192 
193 


CONTENTS 


Massachusetts  supports  Boston        .... 

Severities  exercised  against  the  Loyalists 

The  Other  Colonies  sustain  Massachusetts 

Journey  of  the  Massachusetts  Delegates  to  Philadelphia 

History  of  the  First  Congress  .         .... 


PAGE 

194 
197 
201 
203 
206 


CHAPTER   VI 


Parliament  dissolved  ;  Grenville's  Electoral  Act 
George  the  Third  and  the  Conduct  of  Elections 
Fox  obtains  a  Seat ...... 

Burke  at  Bristol      ...... 

County  Gentlemen  in  Parliament    . 

Charles  Fox  a  Favourite  with  the  House  of  Commons 


210 
211 
216 
219 
223 
228 


Opening  of  the  Winter  Session ;    Wilkes  a  Member  of  Par- 
liament    ..........  229 

Presentation  of  Papers  about  America     .....  232 

The  Poet  Laureate 233 


CHAPTER   VII 

The  King's  Sentiments  about  America    .... 

Attitude  of  Chatham  and  of  Fox      ..... 

Fox  and  George  Selwyn  ...... 

Public  Anxiety  aroused  by  the  Intelligence  from  the  Colonies 
Fox  moves  an  Amendment  to  the  Address  ;  Gibbon's  Estimate 

of  his  Performance  ....... 

Lord  North  attempts  to  meet  Fox's  Point  of  View  . 
Tumultuous  Scene  in  the  House  of  Commons ;    Sir  Gilber 

Elliot 

Bill  to  exclude  the  Colonists  from  the  American  Fisheries 
Consternation  among  Men  of  Business     .... 
Debates  in  Parliament ;   Burke;  Fox;  Henry  Dundas 
The  Colonists  taunted  with  Cowardice  by  the  Ministers  . 


236 

237 
242 
251 

255 
257 

260 
263 
265 
266 

270 


CONTENTS 


XI 


CHAPTER   VIII 

Franklin,  in  Concert  with  Lord  Chatham,  makes  a  Last  Effort 
for  Conciliation         ..... 

Failure  of  the  Attempt ;  Franklin  sails  for  Home 
Amherst  refuses  to  command  in  America 
The  Major-Generals  ;  William  Howe  ;  Burgoyne  ;  Clinton 
Incapacity  of  Gage  ...... 

Gage  seizes  Military  Stores  at  Cambridge 
The  Patriots  on  the  Alert        .... 

Singular  Condition  of  New  England 
Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts  Congress     . 

Growing  Irritation  of  the  British  Army   . 
State  of  Things  inside  Boston 
Royal  Officers  underrate  the  Soldiership  of  Colonists 
Military  Expeditions  into  the  Country  Districts ;  Marshfield 
Marblehead      ........ 

Adventures  of  a  British  Officer 


276 
277 
280 
282 
285 
287 
289 
290 
292 

296 
297 

300 

302 
3°3 


The  British  march  on  Concord ;    Lexington ;   the  Retreat  to 

Charlestown     .........     306 

Washington's  Opinion  of  the  Affair         .....     309 


CHAPTER   IX 

Massachusetts  asks  for  Help ;  New  England  flies  to  Arms 
Investment  of  Boston      ...... 

The  Major-Generals  arrive  ;  Burgoyne    . 

The  Tactical  Situation 

The  Americans  occupy  the  Peninsula  of  Charlestown 

The  British  resolve  to  drive  them  out 

The  Assailants  twice  repulsed ;    Howe  prepares  for  a 

Attack 

Confusion  in  Rear  of  the  American  Position    . 

The  Redoubt  stormed  ;  Retreat  of  the  Colonists 

Losses  of  the  Two  Armies ;   Effect  of  the   Battle   upon 

Revolution  and  the  War 


Third 


the 


312 
312 
316 

319 
322 

324 

327 
33i 
333 

336 


Xll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    X 

The  Lesson  which  Bunker's  Hill  taught  the  Colonists 

Washington  nominated  to  be  Commander-in-Chief 

He  arrives  at  Cambridge  ...... 

Camp  of  the  Americans :    their  Dress,  Discipline,  and  Com 
missariat  .         . 


Scarcity  within  the  City  of  Boston 

Want  of  Fuel 

Difficulties  of  Preserving  the  Morale  of  the  Garrison ;   Bur 
goyne ;  Lord  Rawdon      ...... 

Recall  of  Gage  ;  Howe  takes  the  Command    . 


Activity  of  the  American  Whaleboats      .... 
Political  Complexion  of  the  Naval  Appointments  made 

Sandwich  ;  Admiral  Graves  ..... 
Foundation  of  the  American  Navy  ..... 
Supplies  sent  out  from  England  ..... 
Burning  of  Falmouth  and  of  Norfolk       .... 


by 


339 
34i 
343 

345 

350 
35i 

353 
357 

359 

360 
361 
364 
365 


CHAPTER   XI 

Washington  foresees  the  Approaching  Dissolution  of  his  Force  369 

He  undertakes  the  Formation  of  a  Continental  Army       .         .  370 
Conduct   of  the   Connecticut   Militia ;     Want  of  Arms   and 

Ammunition 372 

Impatience  of  the  Country ;  Washington's  Firmness        .         .  375 

The  Ranks  of  the  Continental  Army  begin  to  fill     .         .         .  377 

Capture  of  the  Nancy 378 

The  King's  Speech  reaches  Boston 380 

Howe  meditates  the  Evacuation  of  the  City     ....  382 

Washington  obtains  a  Train  of  Artillery  ....  385 

He  seizes  the  Peninsula  of  Dorchester     .....  388 

A  Battle  threatened 390 

Occupation  of  Nook's  Hill;  Washington  at  Boston,  and  Napo- 
leon at  Toulon 393 


CONTENTS  xiii 


Emigration  of  the  Loyalists 394 

Their  Character  and  Manners ;    their   Attitude   towards   the 

Adherents  of  the  Opposite  Party 396 

Rumour  that  Boston  was  to  be  burned     .         .         .         .         .401 

The  British  abandon  Boston  .......  404 

Entrance  of  the  American  Army  ;  Joy  and  Relief  of  the  Citizens  405 

Capture  of  British  Transports  ;  Restoration  of  the  Castle  .  407 
Remark  of  Frederic  the  Great ;    Conduct  and  Result  of  the 

Campaign         .........  409 


O  thou,  that  sendest  out  the  man 

To  rule  by  land  and  sea, 
Strong  mother  of  a  Lion-line, 
Be  proud  of  those  strong  sons  of  thine 

Who  wrench'd  their  rights  from  thee  ! 


TENNYSON. 


THE   AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 


CHAPTER  I 

CHARLES    JAMES    FOX 

When  Charles  Fox  left  office  in  the  February  of  1774, 
the  first  marked  period  of  his  political  life  came  to  an 
end.  From  that  time  forward  he  moved  across  the 
stage  a  far  wiser  man,  pursuing  higher  ends  by  worthier 
methods.  An  epicure  in  history  will  regret  the  moment 
when  he  must  begin  to  take  seriously  the  young  aristo- 
crat who  hitherto  had  kept  the  world  of  London  as 
much  alive  as  ever  was  the  Athens  of  Alcibiades.  The 
early  career  of  Lord  Holland's  favourite  son  will  always 
remain  an  amazing,  if  not  an  exemplary,  chapter  in 
the  annals  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  of  the  town. 
That  career  has  been  recounted  in  a  former  volume 
without  disguise  or  palliation,  and  a  biographer  who 
wishes  to  do  his  best  by  Charles  Fox  will  preserve 
the  same  system  to  the  end.  He  thought  so  clearly, 
spoke  so  forcibly,  and  acted  so  fearlessly  that  what  was 
good  in  him  does  not  need  to  be  set  off  by  favourable 
comment,  and  what  was  wrong  could  not  be  concealed 
by  reticence,  or  mended  by  excuses  which  he  himself 
would  have  scorned  to  give.  The  truest  service  which 
can  be  rendered  him  is  to  write  his  life  faithfully  and 
frankly,  together  with  so  much  of  the  story  of  his 
country  as  was  identical  with  the  story  of  the  man. 

When  measuring  the  extent  of  a  change  for  the 
better  in  any  given  individual,  it  is  necessary  to  take 
into  account  how  much  there  had  been  that  required 


2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

amending ;  and  in  the  case  of  Fox  there  was  spacious 
room  for  improvement.  Enough,  and  more  than  enough, 
of  his  old  self  remained.  It  required  all  the  discipline 
of  a  long  interval  filled  with  toil,  disaster,  and  disap- 
pointment, before  the  free  lance  of  the  Wilkes  contro- 
versy had  settled  down  into  the  much-enduring  champion 
who  stood  for  liberty  through  the  dreary  years  of  politi- 
cal reaction  which  closed  the  eighteenth,  and  ushered 
in  the  nineteenth,  century.  Twice  in  that  interval  an 
enormous  mistake,  the  spontaneous  outcome  of  his  dis- 
position, proved  only  too  certainly  that  the  Junior  Lord 
was  father  to  the  Secretary  of  State  and  leader  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  But  those  errors  were  still 
in  the  future;  and  his  public  action  between  1774  and 
1782  will,  in  its  character  and  its  fruits,  bear  favour- 
able comparison  with  an  equal  period  in  the  life  of 
any  statesman  who  in  the  prosecution  of  his  policy  en- 
joyed no  power  or  influence  except  such  as  his  tongue 
gave  him.  The  contrast  between  Fox  during  the  eight 
years  before  he  was  five  and  twenty,  (for  he  began  life 
early,)  and  the  eight  years  after,  exceeds  anything 
recorded  outside  religious  autobiography ;  —  and  that  is 
a  province  of  literature  in  which,  from  Bunyan  down- 
wards, the  effect  of  such  a  contrast  is  apt  to  be  height- 
ened by  the  author's  over-estimate  of  his  own  early 
wickedness.  But,  if  all  the  world  had  been  like  Fox, 
the  epithet  of  "  morbid"  would  never  have  been  applied 
to  the  workings  of  the  human  mind ;  and  he  was  the 
last  man  to  exaggerate  his  past  delinquencies,  if,  indeed, 
they  would  have  admitted  of  it.  The  difference  between 
what  he  had  been  and  what  he  became  was  so  great, 
and  the  transformation  so  sudden,  that  it  could  never 
have  occurred  but  for  a  series  of  events  which,  treading 
with  startling  rapidity  in  each  other's  steps,  in  their 
combined  effect  were  singularly  calculated  to  chasten 
and  inspire  such  a  nature  and  such  an  intellect. 

His  political  career,  so  far  as  it  could  lead  to  anything 
which  in  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries  seemed  worth 
having,  was  ruined.    With  his  own  hands,  to  make  sport 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  3 

for  himself,  he  had  pulled  down  the  pillars  of  his  temple, 
and  had  crushed  none  of  his  adversaries  or,  (what  then 
meant  much  the  same  to  him,)  his  leaders.  When  just 
turned  three  and  twenty  he  had  resigned  his  first  place, 
on  what,  by  a  very  friendly  interpretation,  might  be 
construed  as  public  grounds.  Before  the  year  was  out 
he  had  been  brought  back  again  by  a  ministerial  re- 
arrangement costing  much  trouble  and  money,  and 
more  scandal,  which  had  been  undertaken  solely  with  a 
view  to  his  re-enlistment  in  office.  Such  a  tribute  to  the 
terror  of  his  eloquence  might  well  have  turned  an  older 
and  steadier  head ;  and  Lord  North  soon  learned  that 
Charles  Fox,  however  far  down  he  might  sit  at  the 
Board  of  Treasury,  took  his  own  view  of  his  own  posi- 
tion in  Parliament.  Among  the  three  recognised  func- 
tions of  subordinate  officials, — to  make  a  House,  to 
keep  a  House,  and  to  cheer  ministers,  —  Fox  never 
failed  of  the  first  when  he  was  known  to  be  going  to 
speak,  or  of  the  second  as  long  as  he  was  on  his  legs. 
But  the  only  comfort  and  encouragement  which  his 
more  exalted  colleagues  got  from  him  was  to  find  them- 
selves planted  in  an  inextricable,  and  sometimes  an 
absurd,  situation  whenever  it  suited  his  passing  humour, 
or  that  queer  conglomeration  of  prejudices  and  senti- 
ments which  he  then  called  his  immutable  principles. 
There  could  be  but  one  end  to  such  a  connection.  Fox 
was  dismissed  from  office,  without  the  consolation  of 
having  sacrificed  himself  to  a  cause ;  without  a  follow- 
ing ;  with  no  tribute  of  sympathy  other  than  the  ironical 
congratulations  of  an  enormous  circle  of  friends  and 
acquaintances,  who  were  only  surprised  that  the  event 
had  not  taken  place  weeks  before ;  and,  (what  was  the 
most  serious,)  with  nothing  which  the  world  around  him 
would  call  a  hope.  He  had  sinned  against  the  light,  — 
such  light  as  illuminated  the  path  of  the  Wedderburns 
and  the  Welbore  Ellises  from  one  over-paid  post  to 
another.  He  had  not  learned  even  from  personal  ex- 
perience what  wise  men  took  for  granted,  how  bitter  it 
was  to  have  shut  oneself  out  in  the  cold.     He  had  shown 


4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

that  salary  could  not  tempt  him  to  surrender  a  whim. 
What  sort  of  a  colleague  would  he  be  if  he  ever  came  to 
indulge  himself  in  a  conscience  ?  Above  all,  he  had 
proved  that  he  could  not  follow.  There  was  that  about 
him  which  made  it  certain  that  no  party  should  admit 
him  into  its  ranks  unless  it  was  prepared  to  be  led 
by  him ;  and  in  a  House  of  Commons  where,  during  his 
career  of  joyous  knight-errantry,  he  had  tilted  succes- 
sively into  the  middle  of  every  group  and  section,  there 
were  none  who  would  not  scout  the  notion  of  placing 
themselves  under  his  banner.  His  political  prospect 
was  now  an  avenue  which  opened  on  the  desert  of  life- 
long opposition  ;  and  if  he  did  not  know  what  that 
meant,  Lord  Holland  was  there  to  tell  him.  It  was  a 
cruel  thought  for  the  old  statesman  that  a  son  of  such 
hopes  should  already,  and  all  for  nothing,  have  made 
himself  as  complete  a  political  outlaw  as  was  the  father 
at  the  close  of  a  long  career,  during  which,  at  any  rate, 
he  had  acquired  vast  wealth,  and  had  reached  the  height 
of  power. 

The  blow  was  the  more  crushing  because  it  came  at 
the  moment  when  the  family  fortunes  paid  a  signal 
penalty  for  the  family  failings.  Lord  Holland  had  just 
brought  to  a  conclusion  the  gigantic  operations  by 
means  of  which  he  rescued  his  two  eldest  sons  from  the 
most  pressing  consequences  of  his  indulgence  and  their 
own  folly.  Stephen's  debts  were  very  large ;  but,  with 
the  best  will  in  the  world,  he  had  not  the  genius  for 
prodigality  of  his  younger  brother.  Charles,  before  he 
came  to  man's  estate,  was  the  prince  of  spendthrifts  in 
that  heroic  age  of  dissipation.  He  sate  later  than 
others  at  the  faro  table ;  he  staked  higher  ;  and  he  shut 
his  eyes  more  tightly  against  what  was  suspicious  in  a 
run  of  ill-luck  which  to  the  mind  of  the  bystanders 
required  explanation.  He  ordered  larger  consignments 
of  silk  and  gold  lace  from  across  the  Channel  than  any 
of  his  rivals  in  the  game  of  fashion ;  he  kept  a  longer 
string  of  worse  horses  at  Newmarket;  and,  above  all, 
he  raised  money  with  more  magnificent  indifference  to 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  5 

the  laws  which  govern  that  department  of  industry. 
Indeed,  with  regard  to  those  laws  he  had  his  own 
theory,  which  for  the  time  being  fully  satisfied  him. 
"I  remember,"  so  Horace  Walpole  wrote  in  1793, 
"  that  when  Mr.  Charles  Fox  and  one  or  two  more 
youths  of  brilliant  genius  first  came  to  light,  and  into 
vast  debts  at  play,  they  imparted  to  the  world  an  im- 
portant secret  which  they  had  discovered.  It  was, 
that  nobody  needed  to  want  money  if  they  would  pay 
enough  for  it.  But,  as  they  had  made  an  incomplete 
calculation,  the  interest  so  soon  exceeded  the  principal 
that  the  system  did  not  maintain  its  ground  for  above 
two  or  three  years." 

The  last  of  those  years  ended  with  the  Christmas  of 
1773;  and  on  or  about  that  date  Lord  Holland  had 
brought  to  a  close  a  minute  and  wide-reaching  investi- 
gation of  the  all  but  innumerable  claims  upon  his  chil- 
dren's honour  and  his  own  sense  of  paternal  obligation. 
The  chief  culprit  assisted  in  the  task  with  a  dutiful 
eagerness  which  would  have  been  more  helpful  if  he  had 
kept  a  stricter  account  of  his  multifarious  transactions. 
It  stands  on  something  like  record  that,  when  Charles 
had  given  in  what  he  regarded  as  a  complete  list  of  his 
liabilities,  somebody  else  brought  to  light  the  existence 
of  deferred  annuities  amounting  to  five  thousand  a  year, 
which  the  grantees,  on  their  part,  had  not  forgotten. 
One  hundred  and  forty  thousand  pounds  had  to  be 
forthcoming  before  he  was  free  from  debt,  and  his 
friends  from  the  bitter  anxieties  in  which  their  affection 
for  him  had  involved  them.  The  young  fellows  who 
had  helped  the  two  brothers  to  raise  money  were  re- 
garded by  Lord  Holland,  for  doing  that  which  fathers 
in  all  ages  of  the  world  have  found  it  the  hardest  to 
forgive,   with    a  gratitude   characteristic  of   the   man.1 

1  There  still  exists  a  paper  such  as  only  one  father  that  ever  lived  would 
have  dictated  without  a  thought  of  anger.  The  signature  is  that  of  a 
broken  man. 

"  I  do  hereby  order  direct  and  require  you  to  sell  and  dispose  of  my 
Long  Annuitys,  and  so  much  of  my  other  Stock  Estates  and  Effects,  as  will 
be  sufficient  to  pay  and  discharge  the  debts  of  my  son  The  Honw*  Charles 


6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  made  the  immense  sacrifice  which  the  situation 
demanded  without  hesitation  and  without  complaint. 
But  the  shaft  had  gone  home,  and  Charles  awoke  to 
the  knowledge  that  he  had  distressed  and  darkened  the 
failing  years,  or  rather  months,  of  a  father  who  had 
never  wronged  him  unless  by  the  excesses  of  a  love 
which  could  not  be  surpassed.  His  sorrow  bore  fruit 
in  amended  though  far  from  perfect  conduct,  and  in 
self-reproach  which,  though  not  obtrusive,  was  never 
and  nowhere  disavowed.  A  year  or  two  afterwards, 
during  hot  and  grave  debate,  he  was  taunted  in  a  full 
House  of  Commons  with  having  ruined  himself  by  the 
most  scandalous  vices.  His  assailant  was  a  man  of  his 
own  standing,  a  soldier,  and,  (what  did  not  perhaps 
make  the  rebuke  more  acceptable,)  a  cousin.  But 
Charles  Fox  —  a  master  of  retort,  and  to  whom  a  duel 
was  a  joke,  as  far  as  his  own  danger  was  concerned  — 
quietly  and  sadly  replied  that  he  confessed  his  errors, 
and  wished  from  his  heart  that  he  could  atone  for 
them. 

Everything  about  Fox,  whether  it  partook  of  good  or 
evil,  was  on  a  scale  so  extensive  that  he  was  regarded 
rather  as  a  portent  than  an  ordinary  personage  even  by 
the  contemporaries  who  might  meet  him  in  the  flesh, 
(and  there  was  plenty  of  it,)  any  day  in  the  week,  if 
they  did  not  look  for  him  too  early  in  the  morning.  It 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  this  generation  —  with  its 
more  rational  habits,  and  its  less  marked  individuality 
—  should  read  of  his  early  prodigality,  his  vehement 
penitence,  his  eloquence  and  energy,  and  the  extraor- 

James  Fox  not  exceeding  the  sum  of  one  hundred  thousand  pounds.  And 
I  do  hereby  authorize  and  empower  you  to  pay  and  discharge  such  Debts 
to  the  amount  aforesaid  upon  takeing  an  assignment,  not  only  of  the 
judgments  Bonds  and  other  securitys  so  to  be  paid  and  discharged,  but 
allso  of  all  such  Bonds  Judgments  and  other  securitys  wherein  any  other 
person  or  persons  is  or  are  bound  or  concerned  with  or  for  my  said  son  to 
and  for  my  own  use  and  benefit. 

"  Holland. 
"  Dated  this  26th  Novr.  1773 

To  John  Powell  Esqr. 

at  the  Pay  Office." 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  J 

dinary  strength  of  the  friendship  which  through  life  he 
inspired  and  felt,  as  if  they  were  the  fictitious  attributes 
of  some  mythical  hero.  But  no  one  who  has  studied 
the  letters  which  he  wrote  and  received,  from  his  boy- 
hood onward  to  his  premature  old  age,  can  doubt  that 
popular  tradition,  whatever  it  has  done  for  or  against 
Charles  Fox,  has  not  run  in  the  direction  of  exaggera- 
tion. That  he  should  have  wasted  an  enormous  fortune 
at  four  and  twenty,  and  at  thirty  have  been  contending 
on  equal  terms  with  as  masterful  a  sovereign  as  any 
who  had  ruled  in  England  since  the  Tudors,  seems  per- 
fectly natural  and  accountable  to  those  who  follow  his 
correspondence  through  all  the  stages  of  his  moral  and 
intellectual  development.  The  sprawling  boyish  hand 
gradually  acquired  form  and  consistency,  while  the 
matter  grew  in  weight  and  worth.  But  from  first  to 
last  every  sentence  was  straightforward,  honest,  and 
perfectly  clear  in  its  meaning ;  and  the  character  of  the 
penmanship,  so  legible  and  flowing,  and  so  instinct  with 
good-humour,  was  enough  to  put  the  most  dejected 
friend,  (and  he  had  always  a  supply  of  such,)  in  high 
spirits  by  the  very  sight  of  it.  His  early  vices  and 
follies,  and  in  after  days  the  frequent  excesses  of  his 
public  spirit  and  the  occasional  perversity  of  his  politi- 
cal conduct,  are  all  told  with  the  joyous  unconsciona- 
ble frankness  of  one  who  never  knew  what  it  was  to 
be  ashamed  of  that  which  at  the  time  he  was  engaged 
in.  For  when  Charles  Fox  became  ashamed  of  any- 
thing, he  left  off  doing  it. 

The  communications  which  passed  between  him  and 
his  cronies,  during  the  period  when  the  oldest  among 
them  was  five  and  twenty,  are  such  as,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
have  often  been  indited  and  relished  by  clever  young 
men  of  fashion  bred  in  London  and  in  Paris ;  especially 
if,  like  Charles  Fox,  they  were  conversant  with  the 
temptations  of  both  capitals.  Letters  of  this  class, 
when  they  have  been  written,  as  a  rule  have  mercifully 
perished ;  but  his  celebrity  was  already  such  when  he 
might  still  have  been  at  Eton,  and  certainly  ought  to 


8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

have  been  at  Oxford,  that  every  scrap  of  paper  which 
proceeded  from  his  pen  was  treasured  like  the  familiar 
epistles  of  a  prime  minister.  The  most  free  and  lively 
of  the  letters  were  addressed  to  the  Richard  Fitzpatrick 
who  is  celebrated  as  the  friend  of  Fox,  and  who  merited 
on  his  own  account  more  fame  than  has  befallen  him. 

In  one  important  respect  the  memory  of  Fox  and 
Fitzpatrick  rather  gains  than  loses  from  the  outspoken 
tone  of  these  youthful  disclosures.  They  prove,  be- 
yond any  manner  of  question,  that  the  writers  were  the 
last  people  in  the  world  to  assume  a  virtue  when  they 
had  it  not.  For  that  very  reason,  when  we  come  to  the 
later  letters  which,  for  many  and  many  a  long  year  to 
come,  passed  between  the  pair  of  kinsmen,  we  have  an 
assurance  that  their  views  on  state  policy  and  public 
duty  were  heartfelt  and  genuine ;  and  they  were  views 
which,  if  ascertained  to  be  sincere,  are  to  the  immortal 
honour  of  those  who  held  them.  The  best  comment 
on  the  character  of  the  Fox  papers  as  a  whole  is  the 
effect  which  they  produced  on  the  only  two  men  who 
are  certainly  known  to  have  seen  them  in  their  entirety. 
What  Lord  Holland  felt  is  briefly  but  most  sufficiently 
recorded  in  bronze  on  the  railing  which  separates  the 
Kensington  Road  from  the  grounds  of  Holland  House :  — 

Nephew  of  Fox  and  friend  of  Grey, 

Be  this  my  deed  of  fame 
That  those  who  know  me  best  may  say, 

"He  tarnished  neither  name." 

These  lines,  almost  as  they  stand  in  the  inscription, 
were  found  after  Lord  Holland's  death  on  his  dressing 
table  and  in  his  handwriting.  Charles  Fox,  however, 
was  his  uncle,  and  such  an  uncle  as  falls  to  the  lot  of 
few ;  and  the  world  may  suspect  the  impartiality  of  a 
nephew  who  resembled  him  in  his  noble  and  amiable 
nature,  and  held,  to  the  full  and  beyond,  his  political 
creed.  But  Lord  Holland  made  over  the  Fox  manu- 
scripts to  the  late  Earl  Russell,  whose  standard  of  private 
and  public  virtue  was  as  high  as  that  which  any  man 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  g 

has  ever  maintained  in  practice  throughout  a  long  and 
honoured  life.1  And  Earl  Russell  revered  Fox  as  a 
statesman,  admired  him  and  respected  him  as  an  in- 
dividual, and  entertained  for  him  a  personal  affection 
which  is  rare  indeed  in  a  case  where  the  grave  has  for- 
bidden the  opportunity  of  personal  intercourse  and 
knowledge. 

The  correspondence  of  Charles  Fox  may  be  divided 
into  three  very  unequal  portions.  First  came  that  of 
his  scapegrace  epoch,  which  began  earlier  than  is  easily 
credible,  and  ended  far  sooner  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed. Then  when  his  own  ruin,  and  still  more  the 
sorrow  which  he  had  brought  upon  others,  had  taught 
him  to  look  life  gravely  in  the  face,  there  succeeded 
the  period  of  eager  and  anxious  repentance.  That 
period  was  a  short  one,  for  two  reasons.  First,  because 
he  was  a  man  who,  when  he  was  minded  to  do  right, 
did  it,  and  did  not  talk  about  it;  and  next,  because 
those  whom  he  most  warmly  loved,  and  had  most  deeply 
pained,  passed  beyond  the  reach  of  his  protestations. 
And,  then,  until  his  life  and  his  public  career  were  ter- 
minated together,  there  followed  an  enormous  mass  of 
letters,  dealing  openly  and  copiously  with  many  subjects, 
but  with  none  in  which  he  did  not  take  a  keen  and 
unaffected  interest ;  —  letters  clear  and  easy  in  style ; 
lofty  in  tone  where  the  matter  demanded  it ;  and  ani- 
mated everywhere  by  the  same  fire  which,  in  his  early 
correspondence,  was  expended  in  vivifying  less  valuable 
and  much  more  questionable  material. 

1  The  quotations  in  this  chapter  are  almost  entirely  from  unpublished 
letters.  I  am  unable  adequately  to  express  the  gratitude  which  I  felt  when 
the  late  Dowager  Countess  Russell  placed  the  Fox  manuscripts  at  my  dis- 
posal for  the  purposes  of  this  book,  and  my  pride  at  the  confidence  which, 
in  so  doing,  she  thought  fit  to  repose  in  me.  Lady  Agatha  Russell  has 
done  me  the  great  honour  of  continuing  the  kindness  which  her  mother 
showed  me.  The  letters  referring  to  the  period  covered  by  the  American 
Revolution,  though  interesting  and  important,  are  few  in  comparison  with 
those  which  commence  when  Fox  became  Secretary  of  State  in  1 782; 
which  succeed  each  other  thenceforward  in  continuous  order;  and  which 
supply  the  matter  for  three  out  of  the  four  volumes  of  Earl  Russell's 
Memorials  and  Correspondence  of  Charles  James  Fox. 


IO  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

In  that  correspondence  not  the  least  amusing,  and 
very  far  from  the  most  unedifying,  passages  throw  a 
light  upon  the  otherwise  inconceivable  process  by  which 
a  parcel  of  boys  contrived  to  get  rid  of  several  hundred 
thousand  pounds  in  a  few  years,  without  any  of  it  re- 
maining in  their  own  circle  to  enrich  some  of  them  at 
the  expense  of  the  others.  Charles  and  Stephen  Fox, 
Richard  Fitzpatrick  and  his  brother  Lord  Ossory,  Lord 
Carlisle,  Uvedale  Price  and  Mr.  Crawford,  were  one 
and  all  men  of  strict  honour  according  to  the  code 
which  was  then  professed  in  aristocratic  circles  more 
universally  than  it  was  practised.  His  own  enemy,  in 
a  warfare  which  knew  no  truce,  each  of  them  robbed 
and  injured  himself,  and  himself  only.  It  is  true  that, 
if  money  had  to  be  raised,  and  a  name  was  wanted  on 
a  bill,  none  of  them  would  scruple  to  make  a  request 
which,  for  a  friend  to  refuse  a  friend,  was  an  idea  that 
their  imagination  could  not  even  contemplate.  But 
they  would  no  more  have  cheated  at  cards,  or  ordered 
a  horse  to  be  pulled  on  the  racecourse,  than  they  would 
have  declined  a  challenge,  or  slunk  away  from  the  table 
when  the  wine  was  passing  and  the  punch  brewing. 
They  had,  however,  titled  and  be-ribboned  associates 
around  them  to  whom  the  laws  of  honour  were  even 
less  binding  than  the  Ten  Commandments.  Older  men, 
wrho  had  diced  and  drunk  with  their  fathers  in  the 
days  of  Carteret,  and  who  now  liked  the  lads  for  their 
own  sake,  were  indignant  at  the  treatment  of  which 
they  were  the  victims,  and  astonished  at  the  blindness 
which  prevented  them  from  detecting  it.  But  there 
are  traces  in  his  correspondence  that  even  Charles  Fox 
was  not  so  simple  as  he  appeared.  There  is  a  very 
perceptible  distinction  between  the  tone  in  which  he 
and  his  coaevals  referred  to  those  whom  they  trusted 
as  gentlemen,  and  that  which  they  reserved  for  cer- 
tain high-born  sharpers  whom  they  habitually  des- 
ignated as  "the  hounds";  and  whose  title  to  be  paid, 
when  they  themselves  were  in  cash,  they  ranked  far 
below    the    claims    of    a    loyal    gamester    or    a    true 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  \  \ 

sportsman,  and  only  just  above  those  of  an  honest 
shopkeeper. 

Fox,  at  the  best  of  times,  habitually  omitted  to  specify 
the  year  in  which  he  was  writing,  and  generally  con- 
tented himself  with  noting  the  day  of  the  week.  That 
mattered  little  in  the  period  of  his  established  fame, 
when  the  Whig  whom  he  honoured  with  a  letter  never 
failed  punctiliously  to  enter  the  full  date  upon  the  back 
of  the  precious  document.  But  while  Charles  and  his 
companions  were  boys  together,  they  were  far  too  busy, 
over  what  they  had  better  have  left  alone,  to  trouble 
themselves  about  docketing  their  correspondence.  It 
was  of  the  less  consequence  because  a  description  of 
their  doings  and  misdoings  in  any  one  week,  or  month, 
or  year,  would  serve  for  all.  On  some  ninth  of  August, 
(probably,  from  internal  evidence,  when  Fox  was  twenty- 
three,  and  Fitzpatrick  a  couple  of  years  older,)  the 
younger  of  the  friends  wrote  as  follows  from  his  father's 
villa  at  Kingsgate. 

"  I  have  been  at  Burford  ;  Castle  Howard  ;  thro'  Lon- 
don; one  night  at  Burke's;  and  arrived  here  last  Mon- 
day. At  Burford  I  touched  the  Hounds  for  a  couple  of 
milles  at  Whist,  and  what  made  it  still  more  agreeable 
was  that  Foley  was  no  sufferer.  Do  you  know,  this 
supply  was  necessary  to  support  my  spirits  in  the  hail- 
storm I  was  in  at  Castle  Howard ;  for  not  a  day  passed 
but  I  was  pelted  by  a  letter  from  — ,  — ,  — ,  — ,  — ,  or 
some  hound  of  that  sort.  I  had  a  letter  from  Brown 
offering  me  1800,  which  I  could  not  find  in  my  heart  to 
refuse.  I  believe  I  shall  have  about  3000  guineas  clear 
at  the  opening  of  the  winter,  when  I  have  paid  Caven- 
dish and  others,  including  two  or  three  hounds  and 
tradesmen.  So  much  for  business.  It  has  been  rather 
a  boar,  but  I  thought  you  would  like  to  know  the  state 
of  the  funds.  At  Castle  Howard  we  led,  as  you  may 
imagine,  a  lounging  sort  of  a  life.  The  discourse  turned 
one  night  on  flattery,  which  Keith  held  in  such  abhor- 
rence as  to  think  it  wholly  unpardonable  in  any  circum- 
stances except  from  a  man  to  a  woman  he  is  in  love  with. 


12  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  would  not  hear  of  it  even  to  a  King's  mistress.  L'on 
a  des  principes  fort  severes  dans  ce  bas  monde.1  Pray 
did  you  ever  read  Ferdinand  Count  Fathom  ?  I  think 
it  very  well  worth  reading.  I  grew  thoroughly  tired  of 
the  Lettres  Atheniennes  before  I  finished  them." 

Fox  had  too  much  relish  for  the  manly  realities  of 
Thucydides  and  Aristophanes  to  care  for  the  younger 
Crebillon's  notion  of  the  style  in  which  the  great  people 
of  the  Peloponnesian  war  would  have  expressed  them- 
selves if  they  had  been  writing  in  French.2  He  already 
could  tell  a  real  book  from  a  sham  one,  with  an  instinct 
as  unerring  as  when  he  was  reading  to  Mrs.  Fox  at  St. 
Anne's  Hill  out  of  Chaucer,  or  Burns,  or  Dante.  But 
in  another  important  respect  his  taste  was  still  to  form. 
In  1773  he  was  almost  stern  in  his  reprobation  of  the 
matrimonial  contentment  fearlessly  displayed  at  Castle 
Howard  by  those  who,  in  the  vocabulary  of  country- 
house  life,  were  then  known  as  the  landlord  and  the 
landlady.  Little  did  Charles  Fox  anticipate  that  he 
himself  would  ever  come  to  be  quoted  as  the  supreme 
instance  of  a  man  whose  happiness  was  to  live  alone 
with  his  wife  in  the  very  depth  of  rural  retirement. 
"O  Carlisle,"  he  writes,  "how  art  thou  fallen!  But  if 
I  was  to  begin  to  moralize  upon  this  subject,  I  should 
never  end.  Lady  Gower  sent  for  the  Lord  President 
three  times  while  he  was  playing  a  rubber  of  whist  with 
White,  who  laughed  all  the  while  ready  to  burst.  This 
is  the  more  delightful  because  his  Lordship  had  held 
forth  not  long  before  at  Woburn  on  the  art  of  manag- 
ing wives.     '  You  should  never  hold  the  reins  too  loose.' 

1  I  am  bound,  in  self-defence,  to  remark  that  the  accents  are  placed  and 
omitted  in  servile  obedience  to  Fox's  manuscript. 

2  It  is  enough  to  look  at  Aspasia's  love-letter  to  Alcibiades,  written 
when  she  was  afraid  lest  Pericles  might  glance  over  her  shoulder;  or  at 
the  despatch  in  which  Pericles  himself  gives  the  details  of  his  expedition 
to  Samos,  and  which  ends:  "Je  vous  laisse  actuellement  a  juger,  mon  cher 
Alcibiade,  si,  d'un  cote,  je  merite  les  censures  dont  on  m'accable,  et  si,  de 
l'autre,  je  suis  digne  des  eloges  dont  on  me  comble."  The  book,  bad  as  it 
was,  suggested  one  even  more  absurd  in  the  general  conception,  —  though 
superior  to  Crebillon's,  as  it  could  not  well  help  being,  in  execution,  —  the 
Athenian  Letters,  by  Lord  Hardwicke  and  Charles  Yorke. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  1 3 

'  Familiarity  begets  contempt.'  'Women,  like  children, 
should  not  be  spoilt  by  too  much  humouring.'  These 
were  his  favourite  doctrines." 

"Do  you  know,"  Fox  says,  apparently  ten  days  after- 
wards, "  that  Foley's  loss  to  you  is  wonderfully  circu- 
lated. I  deny  it.  But  the  report  is  very  general ;  and, 
what  is  worse,  I  am  told  that  the  old  man  has  heard  of 
it,  and  rated  his  son  most  damnably.  As  I  had  this 
last  from  Mrs.  Godby,  I  should  hope  it  is  a  lye.  I  find 
he  has  never  left  the  1800  for  me,  which  I  own  I  could 
wish  he  had ;  for  when  I  have  paid  Cavendish,  which  I 
am  going  to  do  immediately,  I  shall  not  have  as  much 
rino  by  me  as  I  like  to  have.  It  is  very  odd  that  you 
and  I  should  have  fallen  to  reading  history  just  at  the 
same  time.  I  have  near  read  one  folio  volume  of  Clar- 
endon. I  like  vastly,  my  dear  Richard,  your  saying 
you  can  have  nothing  interesting  to  tell  me  from  Nor- 
wich. Pray  what  do  you  expect  from  me  at  Kingsgate? 
Je  lis,  je  me  promene  a  cheval  et  a  pied,  je  mange,  je 
bois,  je  dors,  et  je  pense,  non  pas  au  passe,  mais  a 
l'avenir.  Je  me  forme  mille  et  mille  projets  l'un  plus 
impossible  que  l'autre,  mais  tous  grands  et  beaux  au 
dela  de  toute  croyance."  At  this  point,  unfortunately, 
two  wandering  nymphs  came  on  to  the  scene  at  the 
neighbouring  town  of  Margate ;  and  Charles  turned 
from  both  past  and  future  to  the  attractions  of  the  se- 
ductive present. 

When  he  was  travelling  on  the  Continent  the  young 
fellow  wrote  occasionally  in  Italian,  and  a  great  deal 
more  in  French  than  in  English.  The  tongue  which  he 
selected  apparently  bore  some  relation  to  the  national- 
ity of  the  enchantress  who  gladdened,  or  saddened,  the 
passing  hour.  It  is  too  evident  that  the  future  Secre- 
tary for  Foreign  Affairs  learnt  his  languages  in  the 
same  flowery  school  as  more  than  one  great  diplomatist 
who  in  his  day  has  helped  to  mould  the  destinies  of 
Europe.  His  letters,  according  to  the  fashion  of  that 
half-century,  were  plentifully  interlarded  with  slipshod 
French  verse.     It  was  of  the  kind  manufactured  in  im- 


14  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

mense  abundance  by  Frederic  the  Great,  during  the 
Seven  Years'  War ;  —  a  habit  imputed  to  that  monarch, 
as  something  little  less  than  a  criminal  weakness,  by 
writers  who  might  have  had  more  fellow-feeling  for  a 
hero  cultivating  polite  literature  under  what  certainly 
were  unexampled  difficulties.  Fox  took  his  own  lucu- 
brations very  seriously.  "Before  I  say  anything  else," 
he  writes  from  Paris  in  October,  1769,  "  I  must  beg  you 
to  correct  two  damned  faults  in  my  French  letter.  Style 
feconde  is  not  grammar.  Read  verve  feconde.  The 
verse  that  begins  with  des  tresors  has  a  syllable  too 
much.  Read  des  flairs,  and  consequently,  in  the  line 
before,  cueillir  instead  of  puiser.  Pray  alter  these  things 
if  you  have  not  burned  the  letter." 

The  letter  has  not  been  burned,  and  the  corrections 
were  duly  and  piously  made.  Whether  the  production 
was  worth  amending  may  perhaps  be  doubted.  Much 
of  it  is  beyond  question  amenable  to  the  shortest  and 
most  concentrated  of  Macaulay's  literary  criticisms.1 
The  subjoined  passages  are  among  the  best,  or  rather 
the  merriest. 

"  Tu  scauras  que  je  suis  a  Calais. 
Le  detail  de  notre  voyage 
Je  crains  ne  vous  amuserait. 
Somme,  e'etait  un  long  passage 
Quidu  moins  quinzc  heures  durait. 

"  Tu  t'imagines  mieux  que  je  nete  le  pourrais  peindre 
combien  nous  avons  ete  ennuyes.  II  suffit  de  te  dire 
que  j'aurais  prefere  a  une  telle  nuit  un  souper  tete-a-tete 
avec  Milord  Garlies,  ou  un  rendez  vous  avec  Madame 

H .     C'est  tout  dire,  peut  etre  trop.     Nous  debar- 

quames  sur  les  huit  heures,  nous  vinmes  ici,  ou  nous 
mangeames  un  tres  bon  dejeuner. 

1  "  Which  is  the  worse, 
The  prose  or  the  verse  ? 
Neither  one  nor  t'other  is  worth  a  curse." 
So  runs  a  note  pencilled  on  the  margin  of  a  page  of  sad  nonsense  from  the 
pen  of  Percival  Stockdale. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  1 5 

u  Ensuite  ne  sachant  que  faire, 
Apres  avoir  un  peu  clormi, 
Maints  chateaux  d'Espagne  bati, 
Et  bien  reve  de  PAngleterre, 
Je  me  rendis  chez  un  libraire. 
La.  j'ai  trouve  par  grand  bonheur 
Grecourt  cet  aimable  conteur 
Et  pres  de  lui  de  la  Fontaine, 
Dont  la  riche  et  charmante  veine 
N'a  jamais  eu  d'imitateur. 

"  Croyez  moi,  si  tu  deviens  amoureux,  ce  que  tu  peux 
faire  de  mieux  c'est  de  te  distraire  avec  ces  Messieurs, 
lis  traitent  l'amour  d'une  maniere  si  legere,  si  agreable. 
Apres  tout,  les  grandes  passions  sont  du  dernier  ridicule, 
et  avec  le  temps  je  t'en  ferai  convenir. 

"  Pour  guerir  de  la  maladie 
Qu'amour  on  nomme,  deux  beaux  yeux 
Reiissiront  mille  fois  mieux 
Que  Taustere  Philosophic 
S'amuser  avec  jolie  lillette 
Vaut  mieux  que  les  doctes  lecons 
Des  Senecas  et  des  Platons  ; 
Et  la  petite  Henriette 
Serait  un  meilleur  medecin 
En  ce  cas  que  le  grand  Tronchin." 1 

The  time  had  come,  soon,  but  none  too  soon,  when 
this  comedy  of  manners  was  over,  and  the  historical 
drama  began.  It  opened  with  a  scene  like  that  in  the 
room  adjoining  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  of  the  Palace 
at  Westminster.2  The  letters  from  Charles  to  Lady 
Holland  during  the  winter  of  1773-74  breathe  the 
spirit  of  that  contrition  which  does  not  exhale  itself  in 

words. 

If  I  do  feign, 
O  let  me  in  my  present  wildness  die, 
And  never  live  to  show  th'  incredulous  world 
The  noble  change  that  I  have  purposed  ! 

1  The  famous  physician  of  Geneva,  to  whom  Voltaire  wrote  quite 
enough  verses  of  the  sort  which  served  as  a  model  to  Fox  and  to  Fred- 
eric. 

2  The  Second  Part  of  King  Henry  the  Fourth,  Act  iv.,  Scene  4. 


1 6  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

"  My  dear  Mother,"  he  writes,  "  in  regard  to  what 
you  say  of  my  father's  feelings,  I  am  sure  if  you  could 
have  known  how  very  miserable  you  have  made  me  you 
would  not  have  said  it.  To  be  loved  by  you  and  him 
has  always  been,  (indeed  I  am  no  Hypocrite,  whatever 
I  may  be,)  the  first  desire  of  my  life.  The  reflection 
that  I  have  behaved  in  many  respects  ill  to  you  is 
almost  the  only  painful  one  I  have  ever  experienced. 
That  my  extreme  imprudence  and  dissipation  has  given 
both  of  you  uneasiness  is  what  I  have  long  known,  and 
I  am  sure  I  may  call  those  who  really  know  me  to  wit- 
ness how  much  that  thought  has  embittered  my  life.  I 
own  I  lately  began  to  flatter  myself  that,  particularly 
with  you,  and  in  a  great  degree  with  my  father,  I  had 
regained  that  sort  of  confidence  which  was  once  the 
greatest  pride  of  my  life ;  and  I  am  sure  I  don't  exag- 
gerate when  I  say  that,  since  I  formed  these  flattering 
hopes,  I  have  been  the  happiest  being  in  the  universe. 
I  hate  to  make  professions,  and  yet  I  think  I  may 
venture  to  say  that  my  conduct  in  the  future  shall  be 
such  as  to  satisfy  you  more  than  my  past.  Indeed,  in- 
deed, my  dear  Mother,  no  son  ever  loved  a  father  and 
mother  as  I  do.  Pray,  my  dear  mother,  consider  how 
very  miserable  you  have  made  me,  and  pity  me.  I  do 
not  know  what  to  write  or  how  to  leave  off  writing,  but 
you  may  be  assured  that  no  son  ever  felt  more  duty, 
respect,  gratitude,  or  love  than  I  do  for  both  of  you, 
and  that  it  is  in  your  power,  by  restoring  me  your  usual 
confidence  and  affection,  or  depriving  me  of  it,  to  make 
me  the  most  unhappy  or  contented  of  men." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  to  his  mother,  Charles  excuses 
himself  for  not  having  come  to  see  his  father  at  Bath 
on  account  of  having  spent  the  morning  at  the  Treasury, 
and  being  engaged  in  the  afternoon  to  dine,  and  talk 
business,  with  the  Attorney-General ;  —  a  line  of  defence 
which  must  have  appeared  most  valid  in  the  eyes  of 
Lord  Holland.  "  If  it  is  any  comfort  to  him,"  the  son 
goes  on  to  write,  "  to  think  that  his  unexampled  kindness 
has  delivered  me  from  certain  and  absolute  ruin,  and 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  I J 

given  me  as  fair  a  prospect  as  Man  can  desire,  I  am 
sure  that  is  a  satisfaction  he  may  enjoy  very  completely. 
If  it  turns  out  as  I  am  confident  it  will,  only  consider 
the  situation  I  may  now  be  in,  and  that  which  must 
have  inevitably  and  almost  immediately  been  my  lot  if 
nothing  had  been  done;  and  I  am  sure  you  will  reflect 
upon  it  with  pleasure.  Adieu,  my  dear  mother,  and 
Believe  me,  that  as  there  never  was  a  man  so  obliged 
as  I  have  been,  so  there  never  was  one  more  sensible  of 
his  obligations." 

It  was  already  too  late  to  redeem  his  past  in  the 
quarter  where  he  cared  most  to  make  reparation.  That 
which,  in  spite  of  all  that  could  be  said  about  the  stand- 
ard of  conduct  prevailing  among  its  members,  had 
been  among  the  happiest  of  homes,  was  on  the  eve  of 
being  broken  up  for  ever.  Lord  Holland  was  dying, 
with  even  less  reluctance  than  he  had  anticipated.  He 
had  long  been  pleasing  himself  with  the  reflection  that 
his  departure  would  leave  his  children  richer,  or,  (as 
now  was  the  best  which  could  be  hoped,)  less  embar- 
rassed than  in  his  lifetime ;  although  he  had  shrunk 
from  death  for  the  sake  of  the  wife  who  could  not  live 
without  him.  But  now  the  long  romance,  whose  earlier 
chapters  thirty  years  before  had  brightened  Downing 
Street  with  a  glimpse  of  Arcadia,  and  had  forced  the 
entire  fashionable  world  to  take  sides  in  the  most  fasci- 
nating, but  by  no  means  the  least  perilous,  of  controver- 
sies, was  drawing  to  an  appropriate  close.1  The  lovers 
who  had  braved  the  Court  and  the  Prime  Minister,  and 
disobeyed  angry  parents  in  days  when  the  anger  of 
parents,  who  were  a  Duke  and  Duchess,  went  for  much, 
had  set  forth  on  their  common  journey  through  life  in 
the  spirit  of  true  fellow-travellers.  A  whole  generation 
of  warm  friends  and  implacable  enemies  united  in 
admiring  and  envying  their  devotion  and  their  constancy. 

We'll  spring  together,  and  we'll  bear  one  fruit ; 
One  joy  shall  make  us  smile,  and  one  grief  mourn ; 

1  Chapter  I.  of  the  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox. 
C 


1 8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

One  age  go  with  us,  and  one  hour  of  death 

Shall  close  our  eyes,  and  one  grave  make  us  happy. 

As  far  as  lay  with  themselves,  they  kept  that  pledge  to 
the  letter;  and  what  was  beyond  their  power  Heaven 
did  for  them.  On  the  first  day  of  July,  1774,  Lord 
Holland  passed  away  painlessly  and  calmly,  as  one  tired 
out  in  mind  and  body ;  and  Lady  Holland,  who  had 
long  suffered  terribly  from  an  internal  cancer,  did  not 
outlive  the  month. 

Their  eldest  son,  who  had  all  along  been  regarded  as 
the  worst  of  lives  by  those  who  had  a  professional  in- 
terest in  ascertaining  the  chances  of  longevity,  died 
before  the  year  was  out.  He  left  a  young  widow, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Upper  Ossory,  and  sister  to 
Richard  Fitzpatrick.  Singularly  sweet  and  refined, 
young  Lady  Holland  is  never  mentioned  by  the  auda- 
cious cynics  who  were  the  chroniclers  of  the  day,  with- 
out a  genuine  expression  of  liking  and  esteem.  Her 
little  son,  whose  appearance  in  the  world  set  rolling  the 
financial  avalanche  which  nearly  overwhelmed  the  house, 
grew  up  into  the  Lord  Holland  whose  connection  with 
Fox  presents  an  example  of  what  the  relations  between 
nephew  and  uncle  at  the  very  best  may  be.1  In  the 
meantime,  however,  the  loss  which  had  befallen  him 
was  a  crowning  sorrow  to  the  young  statesman.  Stephen 
had  stood  by  the  brother,  of  whom  he  was  so  proud,  in 
fair  weather  and  in  foul ;  in  the  Commons  he  had 
always  zealously  adopted,  even  at  the  risk  of  caricatur- 
ing it,  the  policy  which  pleased  Charles  at  the  moment ; 
and  by  his  death  he  now  left  him  without  a  party  in 
the  Lords.  There  was  something  absurd  about  the 
poor  fellow  who  was  gone ;  but  Fox  (as  his  married 
life  so  curiously  showed)  did  not  insist  on  perfection 
in  those  whom  he  loved.  Now  that  Stephen  had  gone, 
the  home  of   his  boyhood  was  desolate ;  and  he  went 

1  It  did  not  take  Charles  long  to  forgive  the  parents  for  the  sex  of 
their  baby.  "  My  love  to  Lady  Mary,  who  I  am  glad  to  hear  is  so  well, 
as  well  as  her  son;  to  whom,  now  he  is  come,  I  wish  as  well  as  if  he  had 
been  a  daughter."  —  Charles  Fox  to  Stephen.     December  24,  1773. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  1 9 

forth  into  the  world  in  a  mood  of  stern  and  melancholy 
purpose  of  which  a  twelvemonth  before  none  who  knew 
him  would  have  believed  him  capable. 

Good  resolutions  are  ill  to  keep  in  bad  company; 
and  it  would  have  gone  hard  with  the  young  man's 
aspirations  after  better  things  if  he  had  not  cut  himself 
adrift  from  the  reckless  official  crew  who  were  enjoying 
themselves  in  their  comfortable  moorings  before  they 
started  on  the  most  disastrous  enterprise  on  which  a 
British  Government  ever  deliberately  embarked.  Of 
the  Ministers  who  had  force,  wit,  and  spirit,  the  best 
made  no  professions  of  virtue,  and  had  a  very  easy 
standard  of  practice ;  and  not  a  few  were  as  competent 
preceptors  in  evil  as  ever  called  a  main  or  pushed  a 
bottle.  The  most  decent  and  respectable  of  their  col- 
leagues were  not  of  a  mental  calibre  to  exercise  any 
influence,  except  that  of  repulsion,  over  one  who  still 
was  at  an  age  when  the  taste  is  only  too  fastidious  with 
regard  to  anything  dull  and  strait-laced.  It  was  useless 
to  expect  that  a  youth  who  had  taken  his  first  lessons 
in  the  art  and  aims  of  politics  from  the  inimitable  table- 
talk  of  Lord  Holland  should  seek  an  antidote  to  that 
pleasant  poison  by  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Lord  Bathurst, 
that  feeble  figure  in  our  line  of  strong  Chancellors,1 
or  by  doing  that  which  George  Selwyn  would  have  de- 
scribed as  singing  psalms  with  Lord  Dartmouth.  Fox, 
being  such  as  he  was,  could  have  learned  nothing  but 
harm  from  those  whom  he  had  left  behind  him  in  office; 
and  fortunate  it  was  for  him  that  the  manner  of  his 
parting  from  them  gave  no  room  for  repentance  and 
reconciliation.  But  over  and  above  the  negative  ad- 
vantage of  being  forbidden  henceforward  to  look  up  to 

1  Lord  Campbell  had  a  kindly  feeling  for  the  memory  of  Lord  Bathurst, 
and  made  out  as  fair  a  case  for  him  as  the  conscience  of  a  biographer, 
versed  in  the  traditions  of  the  Inns  of  Court,  would  permit.  "It  should  be 
borne  in  mind,"  Lord  Campbell  wrote,  "  that,  as  far  as  the  public  could 
observe,  he  performed  almost  decently  the  duties  of  the  offices  in  which,  to 
the  surprise  of  mankind,  he  was  placed;  affording  a  memorable  example 
of  what  maybe  accomplished  by  a  dull  discretion."  —  Lives  of  the  Lord 
Chancellors,  chapter  clii. 


20  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Rigby  and  Sandwich  as  his  models  and  his  mentors, 
there  was  awaiting  him  a  privilege  which  it  only  re- 
quired that  he  should  stretch  out  his  hand  to  take ;  the 
acceptance  of  which  (for  he  was  not  blind  to  his  oppor- 
tunities) became  the  source  of  most  that  was  gracious 
in  his  life,  and  of  all  that  is  enduring  in  his  fame. 

Among  men  of  our  race,  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe, 
and  under  every  form  of  government,  as  soon  as  a  pub- 
lic danger  is  clearly  recognised,  some  one  will  be  found 
to  face  it.  The  undisguised  tyranny  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  worked  its  own  cure  by  the  sturdy  opposi- 
tion which  it  evoked  from  all  classes,  and  almost  every 
creed.  By  the  time  George  the  Third  had  been  on  the 
throne  ten  years,  there  were  no  two  opinions  among 
politicians  about  the  righteousness  and  wisdom  of  the 
Revolution  of  1688.  To  hear  them  talk,  they  were  all 
Whigs  together ;  but  meanwhile,  under  their  eyes,  and 
with  their  concurrence,  a  despotism  of  a  subtle  and 
insidious  texture  was  being  swiftly  and  deftly  interwoven 
into  the  entire  fabric  of  the  Constitution.  The  strong 
will,  the  imperious  character,  and  the  patient,  unresting 
industry  of  the  King,  working  through  subservient 
Ministers  upon  a  corrupt  Parliament,  had  made  him 
master  of  the  State  as  effectively,  and  far  more  securely, 
than  if  his  authority  had  rested  on  the  support  of  an 
army  of  foreign  mercenaries.  The  purpose  to  which 
he  was  capable  of  putting  his  all  but  unlimited  authority 
was  soon  to  be  written  in  blood  and  fire  over  the  face 
of  the  globe.  But  already  there  were  men  who,  from 
their  reading  of  history,  their  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  and  their  experience  of  what  politics  had  become 
since  the  new  policy  began  to  be  inaugurated,  foresaw 
the  consequences  which  could  not  fail  to  result  from  the 
establishment  of  absolute  power. 

For  some  time  past  they  had  been  looking  about 
them  in  search  of  forces  able  to  make  good  a  resistance 
which  they  themselves,  at  any  personal  hazard  what- 
ever, were  resolved  to  offer.  They  hoped  little  from 
the  people.     Even  if  the  public  at  large  had  been  awake 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  21 

to  what  was  going  on,  and  had  cared  to  stop  it,  all  effort 
in  that  direction  would  have  been  sorely  hampered  by 
the  trammels  of  the  system  under  which  Parliament  was 
then  chosen.  Free  electoral  bodies  existed  in  most  of 
the  counties  of  England,  and  in  some  of  her  great  cities  ; 
but  those  bodies  could  do  little,  however  strongly  they 
might  desire  to  make  their  influence  felt.  They  were 
overweighted  and  overborne  by  the  three  hundred  and 
sixty  members  for  boroughs  in  the  hands  of  private 
patrons  or  of  the  Treasury  itself,  and  by  Scotland,  which 
was  one  close  constituency  returning  fifty  so-called  rep- 
resentatives. In  truth,  however,  the  opinion  of  the 
country  was  asleep ;  and  those  who  were  most  anxious 
to  arouse  it,  in  despondent  moments,  were  inclined  to 
pronounce  it  dead.  "As  to  the  good  people  of  Eng- 
land," said  Burke,  "they  seem  to  partake  every  day, 
more  and  more,  of  the  character  of  that  administration 
which  they  have  been  induced  to  tolerate.  I  am  satisfied 
that,  within  a  few  years,  there  has  been  a  great  change 
in  the  national  character.  We  seem  no  longer  that 
eager,  inquisitive,  jealous,  fiery  people  which  we  have 
been  formerly,  and  which  we  have  been  a  very  short 
time  ago.  No  man  commends  the  measures  which  have 
been  pursued,  or  expects  any  good  from  those  which  are 
in  preparation ;  but  it  is  a  cold  languid  opinion,  like 
what  men  discover  in  affairs  that  do  not  concern  them. 
It  excites  to  no  passion.     It  prompts  to  no  action."  1 

Despairing  of  the  mass,  Burke  turned  to  individuals  ; 
and  he  found  his  recruits  for  the  party  of  independence 
and  purity  among  the  most  exalted  and  wealthy  of  the 
land.  He  argued,  (and  there  was  reason  for  it,)  that  a 
sense  of  public  duty  must  be  founded  on  a  consciousness 
of  public  responsibility.  Thousands  of  honest  votes, 
cast  in  the  polling  booths  of  Yorkshire  and  Somerset- 
shire, went  for  no  more  than  the  voice  of  a  constituency 
the  whole  of  which  could  sit  round  one  table  within 
reach  of  the  same  haunch  of  venison.     The  average 

1  Letter  to  Lord  Rockingham,  August  23,  1775. 


22  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

elector,  when  once  that  knowledge  had  been  brought 
home  to  him,  did  not  care  to  inform  himself  minutely 
about  affairs  of  State,  a  share  in  the  control  of  which 
was  so  capriciously  and  unequally  distributed.  But  it 
was  another  matter  with  those  who  were  born  to  govern. 
The  peer  with  an  hereditary  seat  in  that  House  which 
then  afforded  almost  as  good  a  platform  for  an  orator  as 
the  other,  and  a  still  more  advantageous  starting-point 
for  an  administrator  ;  the  young  man  of  fortune,  who 
had  only  to  choose  the  borough  for  his  money,  as  his 
brother  in  orders  would  choose  a  living,  or  his  brother 
in  the  army  a  regiment ;  the  great  landowner,  whom  the 
freeholders  trusted  and  liked  as  a  country  neighbour, 
without  very  close  inquiry  into  the  side  which  he  took 
in  the  squabbles  and  intrigues  among  which  he  had  to 
shape  his  course  at  Westminster ;  —  these  were  men  who 
had  leisure  for  public  affairs,  who  could  influence  their 
direction  and  their  issue,  and  who  had  the  deepest 
interest  in  understanding  them.  The  nature  and  extent 
of  that  interest  Burke  explained  in  a  fine  lesson,  couched 
under  the  form  of  flattery,  and  addressed  to  a  disciple 
who  was  soon  to  improve  upon  the  teaching  of  his 
master.  "  Persons  in  your  station  of  life,"  he  wrote  to 
the  Duke  of  Richmond,  "  ought  to  have  long  views. 
You,  if  you  are  what  you  ought  to  be,  are  in  my  eyes 
the  great  oaks  that  shade  a  country  and  perpetuate 
your  benefits  from  generation  to  generation.  The  im- 
mediate power  of  a  Duke  of  Richmond,  or  a  Marquis  of 
Rockingham,  is  not  so  much  of  moment ;  but  if  their  con- 
duct and  example  hand  down  their  principles  to  their 
successors,  then  their  houses  become  the  public  reposi- 
tories and  offices  of  record  for  the  Constitution  :  not  like 
the  Tower,  or  Rolls  Chapel,  where  it  is  searched  for,  and 
sometimes  in  vain,  in  rotten  parchments  under  dripping 
and  perishing  walls,  but  in  full  vigour,  and  acting  with 
vital  energy  and  power,  in  the  character  of  the  leading 
men  and  natural  interests  of  the  country." 

Such,  and  so  very  far  from  democratic,  was  the  origin 
of  the  party  which  from  that  time  onward  fought  the 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  23 

battle  of  Liberal  principles  in  Parliament.  Members  of 
a  powerful  and  vigorous  oligarchy  determined  to  show 
themselves  worthy  of  their  trust,  the  more  prominent 
amongst  them  were  marked  out  from  self-seeking  and 
dissolute  contemporaries  by  their  disinterested  political 
action  and  their  blameless  private  habits.  They  had  no 
taste  for  the  amusements  by  which  too  many  people  in 
office  relieved  the  labour  of  misgoverning  their  country. 
What  those  amusements  were  may  be  known  from  a 
letter  in  which  Rigby,  early  in  his  life,  was  at  the  pains 
to  describe  his  nightly  round ;  —  how  he  drank  till  past 
three  in  the  morning,  when,  finding  that  no  one  cared  to 
sit  any  longer,  except  one  man  who  could  not  sit  upright, 
he  went  to  the  Ridotto,  and  at  length,  most  reluctantly, 
to  his  bed  ;  and  how  he  was  abroad  again  in  time  for  a 
cock-fight,  where  he  won  forty  pounds  in  ready  money. 
That  was  the  existence  which  the  bolder  and  more  im- 
portant among  the  Ministers  continued  to  lead  as  elderly 
men,  and  the  distaste  of  the  Rockinghams  for  such  pro- 
ceedings had  almost  as  much  to  do  with  their  estrange- 
ment from  those  Ministers  as  any  difference  in  policy 
and  opinions. 

Horace  Walpole,  whose  testimony  as  a  witness  for 
character  was  conclusive,  whatever  it  might  be  when 
he  spoke  against  it,  thus  wrote  of  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, at  a  time  when  he  was  at  variance  with  that 
nobleman  on  the  two  burning  questions  of  the  hour. 
"  I  worship  his  thousand  virtues  beyond  any  man's. 
He  is  intrepid  and  tender,  inflexible  and  humane,  beyond 
example.  I  do  not  know  which  is  most  amiable,  his 
heart  or  conscience.  He  ought  to  be  the  great  model 
of  all  our  factions.  No  difference  in  sentiments  between 
him  and  his  friends  makes  the  slightest  impression  on 
his  attachment  to  them."  Of  Lord  John  Cavendish 
Walpole  says :  "  I  have  often  disagreed  with  him,  but 
always  honoured  his  integrity.  Surely  that  is  the  foun- 
tain of  principles.  Whatever  has  grown  on  his  margin, 
the  source  has  remained  limpid  and  undefiled."  Sir 
George  Savile  has  been  justly  described  as  the  model  to 


24  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

all  time  of  a  country  gentleman  in  Parliament ;  and  Lord 
Rockingham's  career  marks  the  highest  point  to  which 
the  respect  and  affection  of  those  among  whom  he  lived 
and  worked  ever  carried  a  man  whose  health,  tastes,  and 
disposition  were  the  opposite  of  all  that  the  requirements 
of  politics  demand.  It  was  inscribed  under  his  statue 
by  a  friendly,  but  not  a  flattering,  hand,  that  his  virtues 
were  his  arts.  To  be  one  of  such  a  fraternity  was  an 
honour  and  an  advantage  from  which  Charles  Fox  had 
hitherto  been  excluded.  He  had  struck  too  hard  on  the 
wrong  side  to  please  men  who  contended  for  principle 
where  he  only  sought  an  excuse  for  forcing  his  way  into 
the  centre  of  a  faction  fight.  But  when  he  had  finally 
left  the  ranks  of  that  Ministry  against  whose  example 
their  own  attitude  was  a  living  protest ;  —  when  he  stood 
alone,  unhappy  and  in  earnest,  among  the  ruins  of  his 
joyous  and  careless  past;  —  then  the  Rockinghams  be- 
gan to  watch  his  course  with  interest,  and  soon  with 
sympathy.  At  the  earliest  indication  which  he  gave  of 
a  desire  to  enroll  himself  in  their  band,  they  received 
him  with  open  arms.  He  became  first  the  comrade,  then 
the  close  ally,  and  at  length  the  adored  and  undisputed 
leader  of  men  from  whom,  in  whatever  relation  he  might 
act  with  them,  there  was  nothing  but  good  to  learn. 

The  immediate  change  in  his  habits,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, stopped  many  degrees  below  the  mark  of  perfec- 
tion. He  still  lived  on  credit,  which  he  could  not  very 
well  help  if  he  was  to  live  at  all.  He  still  entered  in  the 
book  at  Brooks's  Club  his  fifty-guinea  bets  that  war  with 
France  would  not  break  out  for  two  years ;  that  Lord 
North  would  have  ceased  to  be  Prime  Minister  within 
the  twelvemonth ;  and  that  he  himself  would  be  called 
to  the  Bar  before  four  given  peers  were  all  either  dead 
or  married.  He  still  played  high,  and  long,  and  often. 
He  still  attended  race-meetings  with  a  sort  of  religious 
regularity,  and  gradually  built  up  for  himself  a  reputa- 
tion of  being  the  best  handicapper  in  England.  He 
liked  going  to  his  bed  as  little  as  ever,  though  he  con- 
formed so  far  to  the  received  theories  regarding  the  ne- 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  2$ 

cessity  of  sleep  that,  when  once  there,  he  left  it  later 
than  had  been  his  wont.  He  continued  to  spend  his 
waking  hours  with  those  who  enjoyed  existence  ;  but  he 
did  not  distinguish  as  rigidly  as  might  have  been  desired 
between  the  forms  of  enjoyment  favoured  by  the  widely 
different  circles  in  all  of  which  he  was  ever  and  equally 
welcome.  His  habitual  associates  were  men  of  honour, 
and  men  of  culture  after  the  school  of  St.  James's  Street; 
and  as  time  went  on,  and  faction  waxed  hotter,  he  con- 
sorted more  and  more  by  preference  with  Whigs.  It 
would  be  impossible  for  a  student  of  the  exuberant  liter- 
ature which  periodically  issued  from  Brooks's  to  deny 
that  that  haunt  of  wit  and  fashion  was  no  monastery. 
Among  the  younger  members  of  the  party  which  after 
a  time  monopolised  the  Club,  there  were  plenty  of  jovial 
blades  whose  notions  on  a  most  essential  point  of  moral- 
ity were  not  merely  defective,  but  positively  inverted. 
It  has  been  said,  without  any  great  malice  or  exaggera- 
tion, that  the  political  creed  of  some  of  them  began  and 
ended  in  the  preference  for  a  stout  man,  who  admired 
women,  to  a  thin  man,  who  was  insensible  to  their 
charms. 

But  the  leaders  of  established  fame  and  authority 
with  whom  Charles  Fox  consulted  behind  the  scenes  on 
the  strategy  of  the  session,  and  by  whose  side  in  the 
House  of  Commons  he  carried  on  the  arduous  and 
thankless  work  of  opposition,  were  men  whose  com- 
panionship was  an  education  in  all  that  was  right  and 
becoming.  Advising  with  Richmond  on  the  draft  of 
a  protest  in  the  Lords ;  arranging  with  Savile  the  list 
of  Resolutions  to  be  submitted  to  a  county  meeting ; 
corresponding  with  Burke  about  the  line  to  be  taken  on 
the  hustings ;  and  then  going  northwards  to  Soho  for 
an  evening  with  Johnson  and  Gibbon,  Garrick  and 
Reynolds,  at  the  immortal  Club  into  which  the  kings  of 
art  and  of  letters  had  elected  the  young  fellow  at  a 
moment  when  his  fortunes  were  at  their  very  lowest;  — 
such  was  now  the  course  of  Charles  Fox's  day,  when  he 
spent  it  well ;  and  as  he  grew  in  years  the  time  which  he 


26  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

employed  bore  ever  a  larger  proportion  to  the  time  which 
he  wasted.  His  elders  loved  him  none  the  less  because 
he  was  a  learner  in  the  intercourse  of  society,  and  never 
intentionally  a  teacher ;  for  what  he  had  to  tell  mankind 
he  was  quite  satisfied  with  imparting  to  them  five  times 
a  week  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  tended  steadily 
and  perceptibly  throughout  his  life  towards  higher  views 
and  quieter  ways,  until  his  sweet  and  lofty  nature  had 
lost  all  trace  of  what  had  been  disastrous,  and  nearly 
fatal,  to  him  in  his  early  circumstances  and  training. 
Before  he  was  old,  or  even  elderly,  a  moralist  would 
have  been  hard  to  please  who  would  not  allow  him  to 
be  a  good  man,  and  assuredly  the  most  imaginative  of 
novelists  could  not  have  invented  a  better  fellow. 

But  of  the  forces  which  work  for  the  improvement  of 
character  the  most  powerful  is  the  pursuit  of  an  object 
of  a  nature  to  tax  all  the  faculties,  and  fix  them  over 
a  long  period  in  one  continuous  strain  of  exertion. 
Such  an  object  awaited  Charles  Fox  outside  the  gates 
of  office,  and  it  was  the  best  present  that  Fortune  ever 
made  him.  It  was  full  time  for  him,  —  and  for  every 
one,  high  or  humble,  who  had  in  him  the  making  of  a 
true  citizen,  —  that  some  work  worth  the  doing  should 
be  set  before  them.  The  apathy  of  the  people,  which 
Burke  deplored,  was  largely  due  to  the  transient  and 
personal  character  of  even  the  most  serious  among  the 
questions  which  of  recent  years  had  divided  the  State. 
The  furious  popular  excitement,  and  the  vast  amount  of 
Parliamentary  time,  which  had  been  expended  on  the 
seating  and  unseating  of  Wilkes,  had  in  the  end  lowered 
the  tone  and  relaxed  the  springs  of  politics.  Members 
of  the  Opposition  had  been  forced,  by  no  fault  of  their 
own,  to  make  a  champion  of  one  about  whom  the  best 
which  could  be  said  was  that  he  represented,  — what  he 
did  not  possess  or  profess,  —  a  principle.  Even  the 
multitude  were  weary  of  staring  at,  and  almost  ashamed 
of  having  helped  to  feed,  the  conflagration  which  for 
eleven  livelong  years  had  blazed  and  flickered  in  the 
train  of  that  graceless  hero.     The  party  hostile  to  the 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  27 

Court  was  now  passing  through  a  reaction  akin  to  that 
which  the  Reformers  half  a  century  afterwards  experi- 
enced, when  the  passions  which  raged  over  the  rights 
and  wrongs  of  Queen  Caroline  had  died  away,  and  had 
left  no  solid  gain  to  liberty  behind  them. 

But  in  the  spring  of  1774  events  were. at  hand  which 
broke  the  slumbers,  and  tried  the  mettle,  of  all  true  pa- 
triots in  the  kingdom.  A  controversy  was  at  their  door, 
unlimited  in  its  scope,  inexorable  in  its  demands  on  their 
attention ;  and  of  all  men,  inside  Parliament  and  out,  to 
none  did  it  come  pregnant  with  greater  issues  than  to 
Fox.  It  was  fortunate  for  him  now  that,  during  his 
apprenticeship  in  debate,  the  topics  of  his  choice  had 
been  trivial  and  ephemeral,  and  that,  possibly  by  a 
wholesome  instinct,  he  had  left  graver  problems  alone. 
It  mattered  little  which  side  he  had  espoused  on  the 
question  whether  an  unlucky  printer  was  to  be  sent  to 
jail  or  committed  to  the  charge  of  the  Serjeant-at-Arms. 
But  it  mattered  very  much  indeed  that  on  the  transcen- 
dent decision  whether  America  was  to  be  enslaved  or 
pacified  Fox  should  have  nothing  to  unsay.  He  came 
to  the  great  argument  fresh  and  unhampered,  his  mind 
and  body  full  of  elasticity  and  strength.  Without  mis- 
giving, without  nagging,  and  with  small  thought  of  self, 
he  devoted  an  eloquence  already  mature,  and  an  intellect 
daily  and  visibly  ripening,  to  a  cause  which  more  than 
any  one  else  he  contributed  to  make  intelligible,  attrac- 
tive, and  at  length  irresistible.  That  cause  at  its  com- 
mencement found  him  with  a  broken  career.  Its  triumph 
placed  him  in  the  position  of  the  first  subject,  and  even, 
(considering  that  his  principal  antagonist  had  been  the 
King  himself,)  of  the  first  man  in  the  country. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE     BRITISH     POLICY    TOWARDS    AMERICA.        THE    SOCIAL 
CONDITION    OF    GREAT    BRITAIN   AND    THE    COLONIES 

In  the  spring  of  1766  a  new  chapter  of  peace  and 
good-will,  —  the  first,  as  it  seemed,  of  many  fair  volumes, 
—  had  opened  before  the  delighted  eyes  of  all  true  fellow- 
countrymen  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  "  We  should 
find  it  hard,"  so  writes  an  excellent  and  learned  author,1 
"  to  overstate  the  happiness  which,  for  a  few  weeks,  filled 
the  hearts  of  the  American  people  at  the  news  that  the 
detested  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed.  As,  in  1765, 
through  the  bond  of  a  common  fear,  the  thirteen  colonies 
had  been  brought  for  the  first  time  into  some  sort  of 
union,  so,  in  1766,  that  union  was  for  a  while  prolonged 
through  the  bond  of  a  common  joy.  Certainly,  never 
before  had  all  these  American  communities  been  so 
swept  by  one  mighty  wave  of  grateful  enthusiasm  and 
delight." 

No  citizen  of  America,  who  recollected  anything,  for- 
got how  and  where  he  heard  the  glad  tidings.  Her 
history,  for  a  year  to  come,  reads  like  the  golden  age. 
Philadelphia  waited  for  the  fourth  of  June  in  order  to 
celebrate  the  King's  Birthday  and  the  repeal  of  the 
Stamp  Act  together.  Toasts  were  drunk  to  the  Royal 
Family,  to  Parliament,  and  to  "  our  worthy  and  faithful 
agent,  Dr.  Franklin."  Franklin,  determined  that  his 
family  should  rejoice  in  real  earnest,  sent  his  wife  and 

1  Professor  Tyler,  of  Cornell  University.  His  Literary  History  of  the 
American  Revolution  is  a  remarkable  specimen  of  the  historical  faculty 
and  descriptive  power  which  have  been  expended  by  Americans  on  par- 
ticular features  in  that  great  panorama. 

28 


BRITISH  POLICY  TOWARDS  AMERICA  29 

daughter  a  handsome  present  of  satins  and  brocades,  to 
replace  the  clothes  of  their  own  spinning  which  they  had 
worn  while  the  crisis  lasted  and  while  all  good  patriots 
refused  to  buy  anything  that  had  come  from  British 
ports.  John  Adams  kept  the  occasion  sadly.  "A  duller 
day  than  last  Monday,  when  the  Province  was  in  a  rapt- 
ure for  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  I  do  not  remember 
to  have  passed.  My  wife,  who  had  long  depended  on 
going  to  Boston,  and  my  little  babe,  were  both  very  ill 
of  an  whooping-cough."  But,  in  his  view,  the  great 
concession  had  done  its  work  thoroughly  and  finally. 
In  November,  1766,  after  six  months'  observation  of  its 
effects,  he  wrote :  "  The  people  are  as  quiet  and  submis- 
sive to  Government  as  any  people  under  the  sun ;  as 
little  inclined  to  tumults,  riots,  seditions,  as  they  were 
ever  known  to  be  since  the  first  foundation  of  the 
Government.  The  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  has  com- 
posed every  wave  of  popular  disorder  into  a  smooth  and 
peaceful  calm." 

The  mother-country  had  erred,  had  suffered,  had 
repented,  and  had  now  retrieved  her  fault.  Parliament, 
at  the  instance  of  Lord  Rockingham  and  his  colleagues, 
embodied  in  a  statute  the  assertion  of  its  own  right  to 
make  laws  binding  on  the  colonies  in  all  cases  whatso- 
ever ;  and  then  it  repealed  the  Stamp  Act,  as  a  practical 
admission  that  the  right  in  question  should  be  exercised 
only  in  cases  where  the  colonies  did  not  object.  The 
proceeding  was  intensely  English ;  but  unfortunately  it 
lacked  the  most  important  condition  of  a  great  English 
compromise,  for  it  was  not  accepted  by  the  beaten  party. 
George  Grenville,  the  parent  of  the  Stamp-duty,  and 
reputed  to  be  the  greatest  living  master  of  finance,  bit- 
terly resented  the  reversal  of  his  policy ;  and  he  spoke 
the  views  of  a  very  powerful  minority  of  the  Commons. 
In  the  other  House  a  Protest  was  carefully  drawn  with 
the  purpose  of  defying  and  insulting  what  was  then  the 
unanimous  opinion  of  Americans.  It  was  signed  by  a 
body  of  lay  peers,  respectable  at  any  rate  in  numbers, 
and  by  five  bishops,  who  wrote  their  names  between 


30  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

those  of  Sandwich  and  Weymouth  like  men  so  sure  of 
their  cause  that  there  was  no  need  to  be  nice  about  their 
company.  Warburton  of  Gloucester,  the  ablest  and  by 
far  the  most  distinguished  among  them,  has  left  on  record 
his  own  view  of  the  duty  of  a  father  of  the  Church  when 
dealing  with  affairs  of  State ;  and  the  theory  which 
satisfied  him  was  good  enough  for  his  brethren.  "  Let 
us  private  men,"  he  wrote,  when  already  a  bishop,  "  pre- 
serve and  improve  the  little  we  have  left  of  private 
virtue ;  and,  if  one  of  those  infected  with  the  influenza 
of  politics  should  ask  me,  '  What  then  becomes  of  your 
public  virtue  ? '  I  would  answer  him  with  an  old  Spanish 
proverb  :  '  The  King  has  enough  for  us  all.'  " 

The  King's  idea  of  public  virtue  at  this  memorable 
conjuncture  was  notorious  everywhere,  and  talked  about 
freely  by  every  one  except  by  the  Ministers,  who,  from 
the  unfortunate  obligations  of  their  position,  were  bound 
to  pretend  to  believe  the  Royal  word.  The  course  of 
action  which  alone  could  secure  peace  and  welfare  to 
his  Empire  had  in  him  an  opponent  more  resolute  and 
bitter  even  than  Grenville.  No  Protest,  phrased  deco- 
rously enough  to  be  admitted  upon  the  Journals  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  could  have  adequately  expressed  the 
sentiments  of  George  the  Third  towards  his  subjects 
beyond  the  water.  On  their  account  the  dislike  which 
he  had  all  along  entertained  for  his  Ministers  had 
deepened  into  busy  and  unscrupulous  hostility.  He 
looked  upon  the  conciliation  of  America,  which  those 
Ministers  had  effected,  as  an  act  of  inexpiable  disloyalty 
to  the  Crown.  He  thwarted  them  by  an  intrigue  which 
has  acquired  a  shameful  immortality  from  the  literary 
ability  of  a  statesman  who  suffered  from  it,  and  of 
historians  who  have  recounted  it.  How,  during  the 
debates  on  the  Stamp  Act,  the  King,  acting  through 
the  King's  Friends,  harassed  and  hampered  the  King's 
Ministers,  is  told  by  Burke  in  the  "  Thoughts  on  the 
Discontents,"  and  by  Macaulay  in  the  second  Essay  on 
Chatham ;  and  seldom  or  never  did  either  of  them  write 
more  pointedly  and  powerfully.     The  process  is  con- 


BRITISH  POLICY   TOWARDS  AMERICA  3 1 

cisely  described  by  Mr.  Lecky,  in  the  twelfth  chapter 
of  his  History.  "  When  the  measure  was  first  contem- 
plated, two  partisans  of  Bute  came  to  the  King,  offering 
to  resign  their  places,  as  they  meant  to  oppose  the 
repeal,  but  they  were  told  that  they  might  keep  their 
places  and  vote  as  they  pleased.  The  hint  was  taken, 
and  the  King's  friends  were  among  the  most  active, 
though  not  the  most  conspicuous,  opponents  of  the 
Ministers." 

When,  in  spite  of  his  efforts,  the  work  of  pacification 
was  accomplished,  George  the  Third  never  forgave  his 
wise  and  faithful  servants  for  having  saved  him  from 
himself.  Determined  to  punish,  he  fell  diligently  to 
the  task  of  finding  an  instrument ;  and  he  soon  was  able 
to  place  his  hand  on  a  noble  weapon,  which  he  used 
with  remarkable  skill  in  a  very  bad  cause.  The  love  of 
Britain  for  Pitt  was  not  stronger  than  the  aversion  with 
which,  in  life,  and  after  death,  he  was  regarded  by 
Britain's  sovereign.  But  at  this  crisis  the  great  Com- 
moner was  recommended  to  the  Royal  notice  by  the 
circumstance,  which  was  unhappily  notorious,  that  he 
looked  coldly  upon  the  men  whom  George  the  Third 
hated.  As  soon  as  the  King  was  sure  of  Pitt,  he  got 
quit  of  Rockingham.  Under  cover  of  a  name  which 
has  elevated  and  adorned  the  annals  of  our  Parliament, 
was  formed  a  bad  and  foolish  administration  which  woe- 
fully misdirected  our  national  policy.  That  tissue  of 
scrapes  and  scandals  which  marked  their  conduct  of 
home  affairs  belongs  to  a  period  when  Chatham  was  no 
longer  in  office ;  but  the  most  disastrous  and  gratuitous 
of  their  blunders  abroad  dates  from  the  time  when  he 
still  was  nominally  Prime  Minister.  On  the  second  of 
June,  1767,  a  series  of  Resolutions  were  passed  in  Com- 
mittee of  Ways  and  Means,  imposing  duties  upon  a 
number  of  commodities  admitted  into  the  British  colo- 
nies and  plantations  in  America  ;  and  it  was  the  seven- 
teenth of  these  Resolutions  which  provided  "That  a 
duty  of  $d.  per  pound-weight  avoirdupois  be  laid  upon 
all  tea  imported  into  the  said  colonies  and  plantations." 


32  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

It  is  a  measure  of  the  greatness  of  Chatham  that,  citi- 
zen and  subject  as  he  was,  his  opinions  and  predilec- 
tions, nay  his  very  moods  and  prejudices,  affected  the 
general  course  of  events  as  deeply  as  it  has  ever  or  any- 
where been  affected  by  the  character  of  the  most  power- 
ful monarchs  who  have  had  an  absolute  hold  on  the 
resources  and  policy  of  a  State.  Just  as  the  history  of 
Germany  would  have  run  in  other  channels  if  Frederic 
the  Great  had  not  been  King  of  Prussia  at  the  death  of 
the  Emperor  Charles  the  Sixth ;  just  as  Spain  would 
have  been  spared  untold  calamities  if  any  one  but 
Napoleon  had  been  on  the  throne  of  France  when 
Ferdinand  quarrelled  with  his  father ;  so  the  fortunes 
of  the  English-speaking  world  would  have  looked  very 
different  in  the  retrospect  if  only  Chatham  had  been  in 
the  mind  to  act  cordially  with  the  right  men  at  the  right 
moment.    With  Rockingham  as  his  second  in  command, 

—  with  Lord  John  Cavendish,  or  Dowdeswell,  or,  still 
better,  with  Burke  as  his  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 

—  he  might  have  lingered  in  the  retirement  to  which 
his  shattered  health  inclined  him  without  detriment  to 
the  public  interest  or  to  his  own  fame.  But  with  Graf- 
ton dispensing  the  patronage,  and  holding  Cabinets  in 
his  absence,  and  with  Charles  Townshend  master  of  the 
revels  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  step  was  taken, 
and  taken  in  the  name  of  Chatham,  which  in  one  day 
reversed  the  policy  that  he  had  nearest  at  heart,  and 
undid  the  work  of  which  he  was  most  justly  proud. 
The  Boston  massacre ;  the  horrors  of  the  Indian  war- 
fare ;  the  mutual  cruelties  of  partisans  in  the  Carolinas ; 
Saratoga  and  Yorktown ;  the  French  war  ;  the  Spanish 
war;  the  wholesale  ruin  of  the  American  loyalists;  the 
animosity  towards  Great  Britain  which  for  so  long  after- 
wards coloured  the  foreign  policy  of  the  United  States ; 

—  all  flowed  in  direct  and  inevitable  sequence  from 
that  fatal  escapade.  Among  the  bright  possibilities  of 
history,  very  few  can  be  entertained  with  better  show 
of  reason  than  a  belief  that  the  two  nations  might  have 
kept  house  together  with  comfort,  and  in  the  end  might 


BRITISH  POLICY  TOWARDS  AMERICA  33 

have  parted  friends,  if  the  statesman  whom  both  of 
them  equally  revered  and  trusted  would  have  thrown  in 
his  lot  with  that  English  party  which,  almost  to  a  man, 
shared  his  wise  views  in  regard  to  the  treatment  of  our 
colonies,  and  sympathised  with  the  love  which  he  bore 
their  people. 

The  first  cardinal  mistake  had  now  been  made,  and 
the  next  was  not  long  in  coming.  British  politicians 
had  much  else  to  talk  of ;  and  the  hardworking,  quiet- 
living  British  people,  after  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed, 
had  returned  to  their  business,  and  put  America  out  of 
their  thoughts,  as  they  supposed,  for  ever.  They  were 
not  prepared  for  the  instant  and  bewildering  sensation 
which  the  news  of  what  had  been  done  at  Westminster 
produced  across  the  ocean.  For  the  colonists,  one  and 
all,  irrespective  of  class,  creed,  and  calling,  it  was  indeed 
a  rude  awakening.  In  the  assurance  that  past  scores 
were  now  wiped  out,  they  had  settled  themselves  down 
to  the  sober  enjoyment  of  a  victory  which  seemed  the 
more  secure  because  all  concerned  had  their  part  in  it ; 
for  if  America  had  carried  her  point,  England  had  con- 
quered herself.  And  now,  without  warning,  without 
fresh  reason  given,  the  question  was  reopened  by  the 
stronger  of  the  two  parties  under  circumstances  which 
to  the  weaker  portended  ruin.  The  situation  was  far 
more  ominous  than  if  the  Stamp-duty  had  been  left 
where  it  was.  Parliament,  by  repealing  the  Act,  had 
publicly  recognised  and  admitted  that  the  claim  to  tax 
America  was  one  to  which  America  would  never  submit ; 
and  now,  a  twelvemonth  afterwards,  that  claim  was 
revived  on  a  larger  scale,  and  with  a  deliberation  which 
showed  that  this  time  England  meant  business.  It  was 
impossible  for  the  colonists,  —  who  were  all,  in  a  sort, 
politicians,  one  as  much  as  another, — to  understand 
that  the  great  mass  of  Englishmen  attended  seldom  and 
little  to  a  matter  which  for  themselves  was  everything ; 
which  had  exclusively  occupied  their  minds  and  con- 
sumed their  energies  during  six  and  thirty  busy  and 


34  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

anxious  months ;  and  which,  almost  against  their  will, 
had  taught  them  to  feel  as  a  nation,  to  meet  in  general 
council,  and  to  plan  combined  action. 

But  if  America  did  not  take  sufficient  account  of  the 
indifference  and  ignorance  of  England  as  a  whole,  her 
instinct  told  her,  and  told  her  rightly,  that  great  men 
behind  the  scenes,  before  they  raised  the  standard  of 
British  supremacy,  had  counted  the  cost,  and  were  now 
fighting  to  win.  Awed  by  the  suddenness  and  magni- 
tude of  the  peril,  the  colonial  leaders  acted  with  circum- 
spection and  rare  self-control.  Abstaining  themselves, 
and  with  notable  success  restraining  their  followers, 
from  the  more  violent  courses  which  had  marked  the 
campaign  against  the  Stamp  Act,  they  undertook  the 
task  of  appealing  to  the  good  sense  and  the  friendliness 
of  the  British  people.  John  Dickinson  of  Pennsylvania, 
so  true  to  England  that  he  lost  all  heart  for  politics  when 
the  time  came  that  he  could  no  longer  be  true  to  Eng- 
land without  being  disloyal  to  America,  put  the  case 
against  the  Revenue  Acts  with  conclusive  force,  and  in 
attractive  shape.  His  "  Farmer's  Letters,"  having  done 
their  work  at  home,  were  published  by  Franklin  in 
London,  were  translated  into  French,  and  were  read  by 
everybody  in  the  two  capitals  of  civilisation  who  read 
anything  more  serious  than  a  play-bill.  The  members 
of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly  resolutely  and  soberly 
assumed  the  responsibility  of  giving  an  official  voice  to 
the  grievances  of  America.  They  explained  their  con- 
tention in  a  letter  which  their  agent  in  England  was 
directed  to  lay  before  the  British  Cabinet;  and  they 
transmitted  a  Petition  to  the  King,  recounting  the  early 
struggles  of  their  colony,  its  services  to  the  Empire,  the 
rights  and  privileges  with  which  it  had  been  rewarded, 
and  its  recent  intolerable  wrongs.  The  language  used 
was  manly,  simple,  and  even  touching,  if  anything  could 
have  touched  him  whom  they  still  tried  to  regard  as  the 
father  of  his  people.  The  documents  were  written  in 
draft  by  Samuel  Adams  ;  and  one  of  them,  at  least,  was 
revised  no  less  than  seven  times  in  full  conclave  with 


BRITISH  POLICY   TOWARDS  AMERICA  35 

the  object  of  excluding  any  harsh  or  intemperate  ex- 
pression. And  then  they  prepared  themselves  for  the 
very  worst ;  because,  though  they  fain  would  hope 
against  hope,  they  only  too  well  knew  that  the  worst 
would  come.  They  addressed  a  circular  letter  to  the 
other  representative  Assemblies  on  the  American  conti- 
nent, urging  them  to  take  such  steps,  within  the  limits 
of  the  Constitution,  as  would  strengthen  the  hands  of  a 
sister  colony  which  had  done  its  duty,  according  to  its 
light,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  emergency,  and  which 
now  ventured  freely  to  make  known  its  mind  to  them 
upon  a  common  concern. 

It  was  all  to  no  purpose.  Their  Petition  was  thrown 
aside  unanswered,  much  as  if  they  had  been  a  meeting 
of  heritors  in  Scotland  who  had  passed  a  resolution 
calling  for  the  repeal  of  the  Act  of  Union  during  the 
hours  which  ought  to  have  been  spent  on  parish  business. 
But  as  regards  the  circular  letter,  even  that  parallel 
could  not  hold  ;  for  no  Minister  would  have  treated  the 
humblest  local  body  in  any  of  the  three  Kingdoms  in 
the  style  which  the  Secretary  of  State  employed  in  deal- 
ing with  the  senates  of  America.  Lord  Hillsborough 
informed  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts  that  her  rep- 
resentatives must  rescind  the  resolution  on  which  the 
circular  letter  was  based,  or  be  sent  back  to  their  homes 
then  and  there.  The  Assemblies  of  the  twelve  other 
colonies  were  enjoined,  in  so  many  words,  to  take  no 
notice  of  the  appeal  from  Boston,  and  to  treat  it  with 
the  contempt  which  it  deserved,  on  pain,  in  their  case 
likewise,  of  an  immediate  prorogation  or  dissolution. 
Such  a  message  could  bring  only  one  answer  from  men 
who  had  our  blood  in  their  veins,  and  in  whose  village 
schools  our  history  was  taught  as  their  own.  Junius, 
no  blind  partisan  of  the  Americans,  wrote  of  them  with 
force  and  truth.  "  They  have  been  driven  into  excesses 
little  short  of  rebellion.  Petitions  have  been  hindered 
from  reaching  the  Throne  ;  and  the  continuance  of  one 
of  the  principal  Assemblies  rested  upon  an  arbitrary 
condition,  which,  considering  the  temper  they  were  in, 


36  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

it  was  impossible  they  should  comply  with."  At  Bos- 
ton, in  the  fullest  House  that  had  ever  met,  ninety-two 
members,  as  against  seventeen,  flatly  declined  to  with- 
draw the  letter.  The  Assemblies  of  the  other  colonies 
stood  stoutly  by  their  fugleman,  and  faced,  and  in  some 
cases  paid,  the  threatened  penalty. 

In  one  city  and  another,  from  New  York  to  Charleston, 
the  language  which  had  been  familiar  under  the  Stamp 
Act  again  was  heard.  The  Sons  of  Liberty  began  to 
stir.  The  glorious  majority  was  celebrated  by  proces- 
sions with  ninety-two  torches,  and  banquets  with  an 
almost  interminable  list  of  toasts.  Above  all,  a  combina- 
tion against  the  use  of  British  manufactures  once  more 
was  openly  talked  of ;  and  the  young  ladies  looked  out 
their  spinning-wheels,  and  the  young  gentlemen  re- 
flected ruefully  that  the  weather  was  already  warm  for 
home-made  linsey-woolsey.  Boston  itself,  all  things 
considered,  was  tranquil  almost  to  tameness,  in  spite  of 
sore  provocation.  But  it  fell  about  that  the  captain  of 
a  frigate,  which  mounted  guard  over  the  town,  had 
taken  advantage  of  his  station  at  the  mouth  of  the  har- 
bour to  intercept  and  impress  New  England  sailors  as 
they  returned  home  from  sea.  During  the  height  of 
his  unpopularity  a  boat's-crew  from  his  ship,  on  an  al- 
leged breach  of  the  revenue  laws,  seized  a  sloop  which, 
to  make  the  matter  worse,  was  owned  by  a  prominent 
patriot,  and  was  called  "  The  Liberty."  A  disturbance 
ensued  far  less  serious  than  the  magistrates  of  Sunder- 
land and  Hartlepool,  and  every  North  of  England  port 
which  possessed  a  custom-house  and  was  visited  by  a 
pressgang,  in  those  rough  times  were  accustomed  to 
deal  with  as  part  of  the  year's  work.  But  the  English 
Ministers  were  sore  and  nervous.  The  mildest  whisper 
of  a  non-importation  agreement,  and  the  most  distant 
echo  of  a  revenue  riot,  so  long  as  they  came  from 
beyond  the  Western  waters,  awoke  reminiscences  which 
were  too  much  for  their  temper  and  their  equanimity. 
The  King,  especially,  had  Boston  on  the  brain.  To 
this  day  there  are  some  among  her  sons  who  can  for- 


BRITISH  POLICY  TOWARDS  AMERICA  7>7 

give  his  memory  for  anything  rather  than  for  the  singu- 
lar light  in  which  he  persisted  in  regarding  their  classic 
city.  To  his  eyes  the  capital  of  Massachusetts  was  a 
centre  of  vulgar  sedition,  bristling  with  Trees  of  Liberty 
and  strewn  with  brickbats  and  broken  glass ;  where  his 
enemies  went  about  clothed  in  homespun,  and  his 
friends  in  tar  and  feathers. 

Whatever  his  view  might  be,  George  the  Third  was 
now  well  able  to  impose  it  on  the  Ministry.  Chatham 
had  retired,  and  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  who  was  not 
master  of  his  colleagues,  held  the  office  of  First  Lord 
of  the  Treasury.  The  Bedfords  by  this  time  had  con- 
trived to  establish  themselves  solidly  in  the  Government, 
and  were  always  at  hand  to  feed  the  flame  of  the  King's 
displeasure.  They  eagerly  represented  to  him  that  his 
authority  had  been  trifled  with  long  enough,  and  prom- 
ised that  five  or  six  frigates  and  one  strong  brigade 
would  soon  bring  not  only  Massachusetts,  but  the 
whole  American  continent,  to  reason.  Lord  Shelburne, 
to  his  infinite  credit,  fought  the  battle  of  sense  and 
humanity  singlehanded  within  the  Cabinet,  and  stoutly 
declared  that  he  would  be  no  party  to  despatching  for 
service  on  the  coast  of  New  England  a  cutter  or  a 
company  in  addition  to  the  force  that  was  there  already. 
Franklin,  whom  Shelburne  admired  and  believed  in, 
had  reminded  the  House  of  Commons  that  a  regiment 
of  infantry  could  not  oblige  a  man  to  take  stamps,  or 
drink  tea,  if  he  chose  to  do  without ;  and  had  expressed 
it  as  his  opinion  that,  if  troops  were  sent  to  America, 
they  would  not  find  a  rebellion,  although  they  would 
be  only  too  likely  to  make  one.1  But  Franklin's  wit 
had  too  much  wisdom  in  it  for  George  the  Third,  and 
for  such  of  his  counsellors  as  knew  what  advice  was 
expected  of  them.  The  Bedfords  carried  the  day,  and 
Shelburne  resigned  office.  Early  in  October,  1768,  eight 
ships  of  war  lay  in  Boston  harbour.  Their  loaded 
broadsides  commanded  a  line  of  wharves  a  great  deal 

1  Examination  of  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin  before  the  House  in  Com- 
mittee.     The  Parliamentary  History  of  England,  vol.  xiv.,  p.  147. 


V 

38  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

more  tranquil  than  was  the  quay  of  North  Shields  dur- 
ing one  of  the  periodical  disputes  between  the  keelmen 
and  the  coal-shippers.  Cannon  and  infantry  were 
landed,  and  the  men  were  marched  on  to  the  Common 
with  drums  beating  and  colours  flying,  and  sixteen 
rounds  of  ball-cartridge  in  their  pouches.  The  first 
contingent  consisted  of  two  battalions,  and  the  wing  of 
another;  and  subsequent  reinforcements  increased  the 
garrison  until  Boston  contained  at  least  one  red-coat  for 
every  five  of  the  men,  women,  and  children  who  made 
up  the  total  of  her  seventeen  thousand  inhabitants. 

So  the  second  stage  was  reached  in  the  downward 
course.  How  serious  a  step  it  was,  how  absolutely  ir- 
retrievable except  on  the  condition  of  being  retracted 
forthwith,  is  now  a  commonplace  of  history.  But  its 
gravity  was  acknowledged  at  the  time  by  few  English- 
men and  those  who  were  specially  responsible  for  the 
conduct  of  affairs  were  blind  amidst  the  one-eyed.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that,  among  our  own  people  of  every 
degree,  the  governing  classes  understood  America  the 
least.  One  cause  of  ignorance  they  had  in  common 
with  others  of  their  countrymen.  We  understand  the 
Massachusetts  of  1768  better  than  it  was  understood  by 
most  Englishmen  who  wrote  that  date  at  the  head  of 
their  letters.  For  when  the  question  is  that  of  getting 
to  know  what  the  world  outside  Europe  was  like  four 
generations  ago,  distance  of  time  is  less  of  an  obstacle 
to  us,  in  an  age  when  all  read,  than  was  distance  of 
space  to  our  ancestors  before  the  days  of  steam  and  tele- 
graph. A  man  bound  for  New  York,  as  he  sent  his 
luggage  on  board  at  Bristol,  would  willingly  have  com- 
pounded for  a  voyage  lasting  as  many  weeks  as  it  now 
lasts  days.  When  Franklin,  still  a  youth,  went  to  Lon- 
don to  buy  the  press  and  types  by  which  he  hoped  to 
found  his  fortune,  he  had  to  wait  the  best  part  of  a 
twelvemonth  for  the  one  ship  which  then  made  an  annual 
trip  between  Philadelphia  and  the  Thames.  When,  in 
1762,  already  a  great  man,  he  sailed  for  England  in  a 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  39 

convoy  of  merchantmen,  he  spent  all  September  and 
October  at  sea,  enjoying  the  calm  weather,  as  he  always 
enjoyed  everything  ;  dining  about  on  this  vessel  and  the 
other;  and  travelling  "as  in  a  moving  village,  with  all 
one's  neighbours  about  one."  Adams,  during  the  height 
of  the  war,  hurrying  to  France  in  the  finest  frigate  which 
Congress  could  place  at  his  disposal,  —  and  with  a  cap- 
tain who  knew  that,  if  he  encountered  a  superior  force, 
his  distinguished  guest  did  not  intend  to  be  carried  alive 
under  British  hatches,  —  could  make  no  better  speed 
than  five  and  forty  days  between  Boston  and  Bordeaux. 
Lord  Carlisle,  carrying  an  olive-branch  the  prompt  de- 
livery of  which  seemed  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  the 
Ministry  that  sent  him  out,  was  six  weeks  between  port 
and  port,  tossed  by  gales  which  inflicted  on  his  brother 
Commissioners  agonies  such  as  he  forbore  to  make  a 
matter  of  joke  even  to  George  Selwyn.  General  Riedesel, 
conducting  the  Brunswick  troops  to  fight  in  a  bad  quar- 
rel which  was  none  of  theirs,  counted  three  mortal  months 
from  the  day  when  he  stepped  on  deck  at  Stade  in  the 
Elbe  to  the  day  when  he  stepped  off  it  at  Quebec  in  the 
St.  Lawrence.  If  such  was  the  lot  of  plenipotentiaries 
on  mission  and  of  generals  in  command,  it  may  be 
imagined  how  humbler  individuals  fared,  the  duration  of 
whose  voyage  concerned  no  one  but  themselves.  Wait- 
ing weeks  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  water  for  a  full  com- 
plement of  passengers,  and  weeks  more  for  a  fair  wind ; 
—  and  then  beating  across  in  a  badly  found  tub,  with  a 
cargo  of  millstones  and  old  iron  rolling  about  below;  — 
they  thought  themselves  lucky  if  they  came  into  harbour 
a  month  after  their  private  stores  had  run  out,  and  car- 
rying a  budget  of  news  as  stale  as  the  ship's  provisions.1 
^  Whatever  else  got  across  the  Atlantic  under  such  con- 
ditions, fresh  and  accurate  knowledge  of  what  people 
on  the  opposite  coast  thought,  and  how  they  lived,  most 

1  Among  accounts  of  such  voyages,  none  are  more  life-like  than  those 
which  may  be  found  in  Davis's  Travels  in  America,  published  in  1803; 
an  exquisitely  absurd  book,  which  the  world  to  the  diminution  of  its  gaiety 
has  forgotten, 


40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

assuredly  did  not.  War  is  a  great  teacher  of  geography. 
The  ideas  about  men,  laws,  and  localities  in  the  United 
States,  which  were  current  here  until  Lee's  Virginian 
campaigns  and  Sherman's  March  to  Savannah,  the 
Proclamation  of  Freedom,  and  the  re-election  of  Lin- 
coln, came  successively  to  enlighten  us,  were  vague  and 
distorted  even  in  an  era  of  ocean  steamers.  But  those 
ideas  were  tame  and  true  as  compared  to  the  images 
which  floated  across  the  mental  vision  of  our  grand- 
father's grandfather  whenever  he  took  the  trouble  to 
think  about  the  colonies.  The  hallucinations  of  the 
British  mind,  practical  even  in  its  fantasies,  assumed 
the  shape  of  fabulous  statistics  which  went  to  show  that 
America,  unless  her  commercial  ambition  was  kept  tight 
in  hand,  would  overset  the  intentions  of  Providence  by 
ceasing  to  supply  her  wants  exclusively  from  Britain. 
"The  great  defect  here,"  Franklin  wrote  from  London, 
"  is  in  all  sorts  of  people  a  want  of  attention  to  what 
passes  in  such  remote  countries  as  America ;  an  unwill- 
ingness to  read  anything  about  them  if  it  appears  a  little 
lengthy,  and  a  disposition  to  postpone  the  consideration 
even  of  the  things  they  know  they  must  at  last  consider, 
so  that  they  may  have  time  for  what  more  immediately 
concerns  them,  and  withal  enjoy  their  amusements,  and 
be  undisturbed  in  the  universal  dissipation."1  They 
read  as  little  as  they  could  help  and,  when  they  did 
read,  they  were  informed  by  the  debates  in  Parliament 
that  the  farmers  and  backwoodsmen  of  the  West,  if 
they  were  permitted  to  manufacture  in  iron,  in  cotton, 
and  in  wool,  and  to  export  the  produce  of  their  labour 
all  the  world  over,  would  speedily  kill  the  industries  of 
Leeds  and  Manchester  and  Sheffield.  And  they  learned 
from  the  newspapers,  for  whom  Niagara  and  the  Rapids 
did  not  exist,  that  the  interests  of  Newfoundland  were 
threatened  by  a  scheme  for  the  establishment  of  a  cod 
and  whale  fishery  in  Lake  Erie  and  Lake  Ontario. 
That  was  the  sort  of   stuff,  said  Franklin,  which  was 

1  Letter  to  Samuel  Cooper.     London,  July  7,  1773. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  41 

produced  for  the  amusement  of  coffee-house  students  in 
politics,  and  was  the  material  for  "all  future  Livys, 
Rapins,  Robertsons,  Humes,  and  Macaulays  who  may 
be  inclined  to  furnish  the  world  with  that  rara  avis,  a 
true  history."  2 

Over  and  above  the  misconceptions  which  prevailed 
in  other  quarters,  Ministers  of  State  were  under  a  dis- 
advantage peculiar  to  themselves.  While  other  English- 
men were  ignorant,  they  were  habitually  misinformed. 
In  recent  years  the  nation  has  more  than  once  learned 
by  bitter  experience  the  evils  which  arise  from  bad 
advice  sent  home  by  administrators  on  the  spot,  whether 
they  be  dull  people  who  cannot  interpret  what  is  pass- 
ing around  them,  or  clever  people  with  a  high-flying 
policy  of  their  own.  But  the  Colonial  Governors  and 
High  Commissioners  of  our  own  times  have  been  men 
of  good,  and  sometimes  of  lofty,  character;  whereas 
the  personages  upon  whose  reports  Lord  Hillsborough 
and  Lord  Dartmouth  had  to  depend  for  forming  their 
notions  of  the  American  population,  and  in  accordance 
with  whose  suggestions  the  course  taken  at  an  emer- 
gency by  the  British  Cabinet  was  necessarily  shaped, 
were  in  many  cases  utterly  unworthy  of  their  trust. 
Among  them  were  needy  politicians  and  broken  stock- 
jobbers who  in  better  days  had  done  a  good  turn  to  a 
Minister,  and  for  whom  a  post  had  to  be  found  at  times 
when  the  English  public  departments  were  too  full,  or 
England  itself  was  too  hot,  to  hold  them.  There  re- 
mained the  resource  of  shipping  them  across  the  Atlantic 
to  chaffer  for  an  increase  of  salary  with  the  assembly 
of  their  colony,  and  to  pester  their  friends  at  home  with 
claims  for  a  pension  which  would  enable  them  to  revisit 
London  without  fear  of  the  Marshalsea.  They  took 
small  account  socially  of  the  plain  and  shrewd  people 

1  Letter  of  May,  1765,  to  the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  under  the  signature 
of  "A  Traveller."  Mrs.  Catharine  Macaulay,  author  of  The  History  of 
England  from  the  Accession  of  James  the  First  to  that  of  the  Brunswick 
Line,  was  then  much  in  vogue  among  the  Whigs.  They  were  rather  at  a 
loss  for  an  historian  of  their  own,  to  set  against  the  Jacobitism  of  David 
Hume. 


42  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

amongst  whom  their  temporary  lot  was  thrown;  and 
they  were  the  last  to  understand  the  nature  and  motives 
of  that  moral  repugnance  with  which  their  supercilious- 
ness was  repaid. 

On  the  Secretary  of  State's  list  there  were  better  men 
than  these,  who  unfortunately  were  even  worse  gov- 
ernors. It  so  happened  that  in  critical  places,  and  at 
moments  which  were  turning-points  of  history,  the  high- 
est post  in  the  colony  was  more  often  than  not  occupied 
by  some  man  of  energy  and  industry,  who  in  personal 
conduct  was  respectable  according  to  the  standard  then 
ruling  in  the  most  easy  branch  of  a  public  service  no- 
where given  to  austerity.  But  they  were  not  of  an 
intellectual  capacity  equal  to  a  situation  which  would 
have  tried  the  qualities  of  a  Turgot.  They  moved  in  an 
atmosphere  such  that  perverted  public  spirit  was  more 
dangerous  than  no  public  spirit  at  all.  A  great  man 
would  have  sympathised  with  the  aspirations  of  the 
colonists ;  a  lazy  man  would  have  laughed  at  and  dis- 
regarded them  ;  but,  (by  a  tendency  which  is  irresistible 
in  times  of  unrest  and  popular  discontent,)  a  narrow 
and  plodding  man  is  the  predestined  enemy  of  those 
whom  it  is  his  vocation  to  govern.  Exactly  in  propor- 
tion as  people  are  keen  to  detect  their  rights,  and  for- 
midable to  insist  on  having  them,  a  governor  of  this  type 
is  certain  to  distrust  their  aims,  to  disapprove  their 
methods,  and  bitterly  to  dislike  their  turn  of  character. 
In  his  eyes,  the  rough  and  ready  incidents  that  accom- 
pany the  spread  of  political  excitement  in  a  young  com- 
munity are  so  many  acts  of  treason  against  his  office, 
which  he  is  always  apt  to  magnify.  His  self-respect  is 
wounded ;  his  sense  of  official  tradition  is  honestly 
shocked ;  and,  while  the  people  are  intent  upon  what 
they  regard  as  a  public  controversy,  he  is  sure  to  treat 
the  whole  matter  as  a  personal  conflict  between  himself 
and  them. 

Such  a  man,  in  such  a  state  of  mind  and  temper, 
makes  it  his  duty,  and  finds  it  his  consolation,  to  pour 
out  his  griefs  and  resentments  in  the  correspondence 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  43 

which  he  carries  on  with  his  official  superiors.  It  is  the 
bare  truth  that  his  own  Governors  and  Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernors wrote  King  George  out  of  America.  The  stages 
of  the  process  are  minutely  recorded  by  an  analytic 
philosopher  who  enjoyed  every  facility  for  conducting 
his  observations.  "  Their  office,"  wrote  Franklin, 
"makes  them  insolent;  their  insolence  makes  them 
odious  ;  and,  being  conscious  that  they  are  hated,  they 
become  malicious.  Their  malice  urges  them  to  contin- 
ual abuse  of  the  inhabitants  in  their  letters  to  adminis- 
tration, representing  them  as  disaffected  and  rebellious, 
and,  (to  encourage  the  use  of  severity,)  as  weak,  divided, 
timid,  and  cowardly.  Government  believes  all ;  thinks 
it  necessary  to  support  and  countenance  its  officers. 
Their  quarrelling  with  the  people  is  deemed  a  mark 
and  consequence  of  their  fidelity.  They  are  therefore 
more  highly  rewarded,  and  this  makes  their  conduct 
still  more  insolent  and  provoking." 

It  was  a  picture  painted  from  life,  in  strong  but 
faithful  colours.  The  letters  of  Bernard,  the  Governor 
of  Massachusetts,  contained  the  germ  of  all  the  culpable 
and  foolish  proceedings  which  at  the  long  last  alienated 
America.  As  far  back  as  the  year  1764  he  wrote  a 
memorandum  in  which  he  urged  the  Cabinet  to  quash 
the  Charters  of  the  colonies.  Throughout  the  agitation 
against  the  Stamp-duty  he  studiously  exaggerated  the 
turbulence  of  the  popular  party,  and  underrated  their 
courage  and  sincerity.  "The  people  here,"  he  wrote, 
in  January,  1766,  "talk  very  high  of  their  power  to  re- 
sist Great  Britain ;  but  it  is  all  talk.  New  York  and 
Boston  would  both  be  defenceless  to  a  royal  fleet.  I 
hope  that  New  York  will  have  the  honour  of  being  sub- 
dued first."  When,  to  his  chagrin,  the  obnoxious  tax 
was  abolished,  Bernard  set  himself  persistently  to  the 
work  of  again  troubling  the  quieted  waters.  He  pro- 
posed, in  cold  blood,  during  the  interval  between  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  and  the  imposition  of  the  Tea- 
duty,  that  Massachusetts  should  be  deprived  of  her  As- 
sembly.  When  the  new  quarrel  arose,  he  lost  no  chance 


44  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  stimulating  the  fears  of  the  Court,  and  flattering  its 
prejudices.  He  sent  over  lists  of  royalists  who  might 
be  nominated  to  sit  as  councillors  in  the  place  of  the 
ejected  representatives,  and  lists  of  patriots  who  should 
be  deported  to  England,  and  there  tried  for  their  lives. 
He  called  on  the  Bedfords  for  troops  as  often  and  as 
importunately  as  ever  the  Bedfords  themselves  had 
called  for  trumps  when  a  great  stake  was  on  the  card- 
table.  He  advised  that  the  judges  and  the  civil  ser- 
vants of  Massachusetts  should  be  paid  by  the  Crown 
with  money  levied  from  the  colony.  He  pleaded  in 
secret  that  the  obnoxious  taxes  should  never,  and  on  no 
account,  be  repealed  or  mitigated ;  while  in  a  public  de- 
spatch he  recommended  that  a  petition  from  the  As- 
sembly, praying  for  relief  from  these  very  taxes,  should 
be  favourably  considered.  For  this  plot  against  the 
liberties  of  America  was  carried  on  out  of  the  view  of 
her  people.  Amidst  the  surprise  and  dismay  inspired 
by  each  successive  stroke  of  severity  with  which  they 
were  visited,  the  colonists  did  not  recognise,  and  in  some 
cases  did  not  even  suspect,  the  hand  of  their  own  paid 
servants,  who  were  for  ever  professing  to  mediate  be- 
tween them  and  their  angry  sovereign.  Since  Machia- 
velli  undertook  to  teach  the  Medici  how  principalities 
might  be  governed  and  maintained,  no  such  body  of  lit- 
erature was  put  on  paper  as  that  in  which  Sir  Francis 
Bernard,  (for  his  services  procured  him  a  baronetcy,) 
instructed  George  the  Third  and  his  Ministers  in  the  art 
of  throwing  away  a  choice  portion  of  a  mighty  Empire. 

But  in  order  to  comprehend  a  policy  which  lay  so 
far  outside  the  known  and  ordinary  limits  of  human 
infatuation,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  there  was  a 
deeper  and  a  more  impassable  gulf  than  the  Atlantic 
between  the  colonists  and  their  rulers.  If  Cabinet 
Ministers  at  home  had  known  the  Americans  better, 
they  would  only  have  loved  them  less.  The  higher  up 
in  the  peerage  an  Englishman  stood,  and  the  nearer  to 
influence  and  power,  the  more  unlikely  it  was  that  he 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  45 

would  be  in  sympathy  with  his  brethren  across  the  seas, 
or  that  he  would  be  capable  of  respecting  their  suscepti- 
bilities, and  of  apprehending  their  virtues,  which  were 
less  to  his  taste  even  than  their  imperfections.  It  is 
unnecessary  to  recapitulate  any  portion  of  the  copious 
mass  of  evidence,  drawn  from  their  own  mouths,  and 
those  of  their  boon  companions  and  confederates,  by 
aid  of  which  a  description  —  and  the  accuracy  of  it  no 
one  has  thought  fit  to  impugn  —  has  been  given  of  the 
personal  habits  and  the  public  morality  prevalent  among 
those  statesmen  whom  the  majority  in  Parliament  sup- 
ported, and  in  whom  the  King  reposed  his  confidence.1 
How  they  drank  and  gamed ;  what  scandalous  modes 
of  life  they  led  themselves,  and  joyously  condoned  in 
others ;  what  they  spent  and  owed,  and  whence  they 
drew  the  vast  sums  of  money  by  which  they  fed  their 
extravagance,  may  be  found  in  a  hundred  histories  and 
memoirs,  dramas,  novels,  and  satires.  But  the  story  is 
nowhere  recorded  in  such  downright  language,  and  with 
so  much  exuberance  of  detail,  as  in  the  easy  mutual 
confidences  of  the  principal  actors ;  if,  indeed,  that 
can  be  called  a  confidence  which  the  person  concerned 
would  have  told  with  equal  freedom  and  self-compla- 
cency to  any  man,  —  and,  it  must  be  confessed,  to  many 
women,  —  as  long  as  the  hearers  were  of  his  own  rank, 
and  belonged  to  his  own  party. 

These  folk  were  the  product  of  their  age,  which,  in 
its  worst  aspect,  resembled  nothing  that  England  has 
known  before  or  since.  The  stern  heroes  who  waged  the 
great  civic  contest  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  who 
drew  their  strength  from  the  highest  of  all  sources,  had 
been  succeeded  by  a  race  who  in  private  very  generally 
lived  for  enjoyment,  and  in  Parliament  fought  for  their 
own  hand.  The  fibre  of  our  public  men  had  long  been 
growing  dangerously  lax,  and  at  length  temptation  came 
in  irresistible  force.  The  sudden  wealth  which  poured 
into  England  after  Chatham  had  secured  her  predomi- 

1  Chapter  III.  of  the  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox. 


46  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

nance  in  both  hemispheres  brought  in  its  train  a  flood 
of  extravagance  and  corruption,  and  occasioned  grave 
misgivings  to  those  who  were  proud  of  her  good  name, 
and  who  understood  her  real  interests.  There  was 
now,  however,  in  store  for  our  country  a  severe  and 
searching  lesson,  the  direct  consequence  of  her  faults, 
and  proportioned  to  their  magnitude,  but  by  which  as 
a  nation  she  was  capable  of  profiting.  She  escaped  the 
fate  of  other  world-wide  empires  by  the  noble  spirit 
in  which  she  accepted  the  teaching  of  disaster.  From 
the  later  years  of  the  American  war  onwards  there 
set  in  a  steady  and  genuine  reformation  in  personal  and 
political  morals  which  carried  her  safe,  strong,  and 
pure  through  the  supreme  ordeal  of  the  wrestle  with 
Napoleon. 

But  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  there  was  a 
period  when  Englishmen  who  had  studied  the  past,  and 
who  watched  the  present,  recognised,  most  unwillingly, 
a  close  parallel  between  their  own  country  and  the 
capital  of  the  ancient  world  at  the  time  when  the 
Provinces  lay  helpless  and  defenceless  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Senate.  They  read  their  Gibbon  with  uneasy 
presentiments,  and  were  not  disposed  to  quarrel  with 
satirists  who  found  in  London  and  Bath  much  the  same 
material  as  Rome  and  Baise  had  afforded  to  Juvenal. 
Smollett,  though  by  preference  he  drew  from  ugly 
models,  depicted  things  as  he  saw  them,  and  not  as 
he  imagined  them.  Those  scenes  of  coarseness  and 
debauchery,  of  place-hunting  and  bribery,  of  mean 
tyranny  and  vulgar  favouritism,  which  make  his  town- 
stories  little  short  of  nauseous,  and  give  to  his  sea- 
stories  their  unpleasing  but  unquestionable  power,  were 
only  the  seamy  side  of  that  tapestry  on  which  more 
fashionable  artists  recorded  the .  sparkling  follies  and 
splendid  jobbery  of  their  era.  Great  in  describing  the 
symptoms,  Smollett  had  detected  the  root  of  the  disease, 
as  is  shown  in  his  description  of  the  throng  of  visitors 
who  came  to  drink  the  Bath  waters.  "All  these 
absurdities,"  he  wrote,  "  arise  from  the  general  tide  of 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COIONIES 


47 


luxury,  which  hath  overpowered  the  nation,  and  swept 
away  all,  even  the  dregs  of  the  people.  Clerks  and 
factors  from  the  East  Indies,  loaded  with  the  spoils  of 
plundered  provinces ;  planters,  negro-drivers,  and  huck- 
sters from  our  American  plantations,  enriched  they 
know  not  how ;  agents,  commissaries,  and  contractors, 
who  have  fattened  in  two  successive  wars  on  the  blood 
of  the  nation ;  usurers,  brokers,  and  jobbers  of  every 
kind;  men  of  low  birth  and  no  breeding,  have  found 
themselves  suddenly  translated  to  a  state  of  affluence 
unknown  to  former  ages."  1 

Other  writers,  who  were  not  professional  cynics,  and 
who  observed  mankind  with  no  inclination  to  make  the 
worst  of  what  they  saw,  were  all  in  the  same  story. 
Home  Tooke  pronounced  that  English  manners  had 
not  changed  by  degrees,  but  of  a  sudden  ;  and  he  attrib- 
uted it  chiefly  to  our  connection  with  India  that  luxury 
and  corruption  had  flowed  in,  "  not  as  in  Greece,  like  a 
gentle  rivulet,  but  after  the  manner  of  a  torrent."  2  On 
such  a  point  no  more  unimpeachable  witnesses  can  be 
found  than  those  American  Tories  who  sacrificed  their 
homes,  their  careers,  and  their  properties  for  love  of 
England,  and  for  the  duty  which  they  thought  that  they 
owed  her.  These  honest  men  were  shocked  and  pained 
to  find  that  in  passing  from  the  colonies  to  the  mother- 
country  they  had  exchanged  an  atmosphere  of  hardi- 
hood, simplicity,  and  sobriety  for  what  seemed  to  them 
a  perpetual  cyclone  of  prodigality  and  vice.  Their 
earlier  letters,  before  they  had  grown  accustomed  to  a 
state  of  manners  which  they  never  could  bring  them- 
selves to  approve,  breathe  in  every  paragraph  disap- 
pointment and  disillusion.3     The  blemishes  on  the  fair 

1  Humphrey  Clinker.     The  letter  from  Bath  of  April  23. 

2  Memoirs  of  John  Home  Tooke,  vol.  ii.,  p.  488. 

8  Samuel  Curwen,  for  instance,  who  left  Salem  in  Massachusetts  for 
London  in  May,  1775,  writes  in  July  of  the  same  year:  "  The  dissipation, 
self-forgetfulness,  and  vicious  indulgences  of  every  kind  which  characterise 
this  metropolis  are  not  to  be  wondered  at.  The  unbounded  riches  of 
many  afford  the  means  of  every  species  of  luxury,  which,  (thank  God,) 
our  part  of  America  is  ignorant  of."     And  again  in  the  following  August : 


48  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

fame  of  England,  which  these  unhappy  children  of  her 
adoption  discovered  late  in  life,  were  familiar  to  her  na- 
tive sons  from  the  time  when  they  first  began  to  take 
account  of  what  was  going  on  around  them.  Church- 
ill's denunciations  of  the  rake,  the  gamester,  and  the 
duellist  in  high  places  of  trust  and  power  read  to  us 
now  like  the  conventional  invective  of  satire ;  but  in  his 
own  generation  they  were  true  to  the  life  and  the  letter. 
And  Cowper,  whose  most  halting  verse  had  a  dignity 
and  sincerity  which  must  ever  be  wanting  to  Churchill's 
bouncing  couplets,  made  it  a  complaint  against  his 
country 

That  she  is  rigid  in  denouncing  death 

On  petty  robbers,  and  indulges  life 

And  liberty,  and  oft-times  honour  too, 

To  peculators  of  the  public  gold  : 

That  thieves  at  home  must  hang,  but  he  that  puts 

Into  his  overgorged  and  bloated  purse 

The  wealth  of  Indian  provinces,  escapes.1 

By  whatever  channels  money  flowed  into  the  country, 
it  was  in  the  nature  of  things  that  those  who  were  the 
strongest  should  get  the  most.  The  people  of  birth 
and  fashion,  who  as  a  class  were  always  in  power,  had 
no  mind  to  be  outbid  and  outshone  by  the  nabobs,  and 
army  contractors,  and  West  Indian  planters  who  were 
pushing  to  the  front  in  parliament  and  in  society.  In 
order  to  hold  their  own  against  the  new  men  in  wealth, 
and  in  all  that  wealth  brings,  they  had  one  resource, 
and  one  only.  The  opinion  of  their  set  forbade  them 
to  engage  in  trade ;  and,  apart  from  any  question  of 
sentiment,  their  self-indulgent  habits  unfitted  them  for 
the  demands  of  a  genuine  business  life,  which  were 
more  severe  then  than  now.     The  spurious  business 

"  You  will  not  wonder  at  the  luxury,  dissipation,  and  profligacy  of  manners 
said  to  reign  in  this  capital,  when  you  consider  that  the  temptations  to 
indulgence,  from  the  lowest  haunts  to  the  most  elegant  and  expensive 
rendezvous  of  the  noble  and  polished  world,  are  almost  beyond  the  power 
of  number  to  reckon  up." 
1  Book  I.  of  The  Task. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES 


49 


which  a  gentleman  may  do  in  his  off  hours  with  no 
commercial  training,  no  capital,  and  no  risk  except  to 
honour,  was  unknown  in  those  primitive  days.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  City  did  not  care  to  beg  or  to 
buy  any  man's  name,  unless  he  gave  with  it  the  whole 
of  his  time  and  the  whole  of  his  credit.  But  a  great 
peer  had  small  cause  to  regret  that  the  gates  of  com- 
merce were  barred  to  him  and  his,  as  long  as  he  could 
help  himself  out  of  the  taxes,  and  help  himself  royally ; 
for,  in  that  paradise  of  privilege,  what  an  individual 
received  from  the  public  was  in  proportion  to  the  means 
which  he  possessed  already.  Horace  Walpole,  who 
lived  very  long  and  very  well  on  sinecures  which  were 
waiting  for  him  when  he  came  of  age,  said  that  there 
was  no  living  in  England  under  twenty  thousand  a  year. 
"  Not  that  that  suffices ;  but  it  enables  one  to  ask  for  a 
pension  for  two  or  three  lives." 

A  nobleman  with  a  large  supply  of  influence  to  sell, 
who  watched  the  turn  of  the  market,  and  struck  in  at 
the  right  moment,  might  make  the  fortune  of  his  family 
in  the  course  of  a  single  week.  "  To-morrow,"  Rigby 
wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford  in  September,  1766, 
"  Lord  Hertford  kisses  hands  for  Master  of  the  Horse. 
Lord  Beauchamp  is  made  Constable  of  Dublin  Castle 
for  life  in  the  room  of  an  old  Mr.  Hatton.  Lord  Hert- 
ford gives  Mr.  Hatton  a  thousand  pounds  to  quit  his 
employment,  which  was  five  hundred  a  year.  A  thou- 
sand more  is  added,  and  Lord  Beauchamp  has  got  it 
for  his  life.  There  is  another  job  done  for  another  son 
in  a  Custom-house  place,  which  will  be  a  thousand  a 
year  more.  In  short,  what  with  sons  and  daughters, 
and  boroughs,  and  employments  of  all  kinds,  I  never 
heard  of  such  a  trading  voyage  as  his  Lordship's  has 
proved."  Rigby  himself  —  whose  stock-in-trade  was  an 
effrontery  superior  to  the  terrors  of  debate,  a  head  of 
proof  in  a  drinking  bout,  and  an  undeniable  popularity 
with  all  circles  whose  good-will  was  no  compliment  — 
was  Master  of  the  Rolls  in  Ireland,  or  rather  out  of  Ire- 
land, for  life.     In  addition,  he  enjoyed  for  the  space  of 


50  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

fourteen  years  the  vast  and  more  than  questionable 
emoluments  of  a  Paymaster  of  the  Forces  who  was 
without  a  conscience,  and  with  a  good  friend  at  the 
Treasury.  A  balance  of  eleven  hundred  thousand 
pounds  of  public  money  stood  in  his  name  at  the  bank, 
the  interest  on  which  went  to  him,  or  rather  to  his 
creditors ;  for  he  lived  and  died  insolvent.  To  this  day 
the  nation  has  against  him  a  bad  debt  of  a  large  amount, 
in  the  sense,  that  is,  in  which  a  traveller  whose  purse 
has  been  taken  has  a  bad  debt  against  a  highwayman. 

The  increasing  luxury  and  the  rise  in  the  standard  of 
living,  which  drove  great  men  into  these  raids  on  the 
Exchequer,  at  the  same  time  provided  the  means  of 
gratifying,  if  not  of  satisfying,  their  rapacity.  New 
offices  were  created  out  of  the  superfluities  of  the 
revenue  ;  and,  as  each  year  went  round,  those  which 
already  existed  became  better  worth  having.  The 
receipts  of  the  Customs  and  the  Excise  together  under 
Lord  North  were  double  what  they  had  been  under  Sir 
Robert  Walpole.  The  profits  of  patent  places,  which 
were  received  in  fees  or  in  percentages,  mounted  steadily 
upwards  as  the  business  which  passed  through  the 
hands  of  the  holder,  or  of  his  humble  and  poorly  paid 
subordinates,  grew  in  importance  and  in  volume.  The 
Usher  of  the  Exchequer  saw  his  gains,  in  the  course  of 
one  generation,  grow  from  nine  hundred  to  eighteen 
hundred,  and  from  eighteen  hundred  to  four  thousand 
two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  The  spread  of  commerce, 
the  rush  of  enterprise,  brought  causes  into  the  Courts, 
and  private  Bills  on  to  the  table  of  Parliament,  in 
numbers  such  that  many  a  post,  which  twenty  years 
before  had  been  regarded  as  a  moderate  competence  for 
life,  now  enabled  its  occupier  to  entertain  the  ambition 
of  founding  a  family  out  of  the  tribute  which  he  levied 
from  litigants  and  promoters. 

The  domestic  history  of  the  epoch  clearly  shows  that 
every  noble,  and  even  gentle,  household  in  the  kingdom 
claimed  as  the  birthright  of  its  members  that  they  should 
live  by  salary.     The  eldest  son  succeeded  to  the  estate, 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  5 1 

the  most  valuable  part  of  which,  more  productive  than 
a  coal-mine  or  a  slate-quarry,  was  some  dirty  village 
which  returned  a  member  for  each  half-score  of  its 
twenty  cottages.  The  second  son  was  in  the  Guards. 
The  third  took  a  family  living,  and  looked  forward  to 
holding  at  least  a  Canonry  as  well.  The  fourth  entered 
the  Royal  Navy  ;  and  those  that  came  after,  (for  fathers 
of  all  ranks  did  their  duty  by  the  State,  whose  need  of 
men  was  then  at  the  greatest,)  joined  a  marching  regi- 
ment as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough  to  carry  the 
colours.  And  as  soldiers  and  sailors,  whatever  might 
be  the  case  in  other  departments,  our  ancestors  gave 
full  value  for  their  wages.  From  the  day  when  Rodney 
broke  the  line  off  Dominica,  back  to  the  day  when  de 
Grammont  did  not  break  the  line  at  Dettingen,  a  com- 
mission in  the  British  army  or  navy  was  no  sinecure. 
Our  aristocracy  took  the  lion's  share,  but  they  played 
the  lion's  part.  The  sons  and  grandsons  of  the  nouses 
of  Manners  and  Keppel  did  not  do  their  work  in  the 
field  and  on  the  quarter-deck  by  proxy.  Killed  in  Ger- 
many, killed  in  America,  killed  in  the  Carnatic  with 
Laurence,  killed  on  the  high  seas  in  an  action  of  frigates, 
drowned  in  a  transport,  died  of  wounds  on  his  way 
home  from  the  West  Indies,  —  such  entries,  coming 
thick  and  fast  over  a  period  of  forty  years,  during  which 
we  were  fighting  for  five  and  twenty,  make  the  baldest 
record  of  our  great  families  a  true  roll  of  honour. 

Whether  they  lived  on  their  country  or  died  for  her, 
the  members  of  our  ruling  class  were  an  aristocracy ; 
State-paid,  as  far  as  they  earned  money  at  all ;  seldom 
entering  the  open  professions ;  and  still  further  re- 
moved from  the  homely  and  laborious  occupations  on 
which  the  existence  of  society  is  founded.  But  they 
governed  the  Empire,  and,  among  other  parts  of  the 
Empire,  those  great  provinces  in  North  America  which 
were  inhabited  by  a  race  of  men  with  whom,  except 
their  blood  and  language,  they  had  little  in  common. 
Burke,  who  told  the  House  of  Commons  that  he  had 


52  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

taken  for  some  years  a  good  deal  of  pains  to  inform 
himself  on  the  matter,  put  the  white  population  in  the 
colonies  at  not  less  than  two  millions,  which  was  some- 
thing between  a  fourth  and  a  fifth  of  the  population  of 
Great  Britain.  The  outposts  of  that  army  of  pioneers 
were  doing  battle  with  the  wilderness  along  an  ever- 
advancing  frontier  of  eighteen  hundred  miles  from  end 
to  end.  In  the  Southern  States,  where  life  was  cruelly 
rough  for  the  poorer  settlers,  and  where  the  more 
wealthy  landowners  depended  on  the  labour  of  negroes, 
society  was  already  constituted  after  a  fashion  which 
differed  from  anything  that  was  to  be  seen  in  New 
England,  or  in  Old  England  either.  But  the  great 
majority  of  the  colonists  were  gathered  together,  though 
not  very  near  together,  in  settled  districts,  with  a  civili- 
sation and  a  type  of  character  of  their  own  such  as  the 
world  had  never  before  witnessed. 

The  French  nobles,  who  brought  their  swords  and 
fortunes  to  the  assistance  of  the  Revolution  in  America, 
opened  their  eyes  on  the  morning  after  their  arrival 
upon  a  state  of  things  which  closely  resembled  the 
romantic  ideal  then  fashionable  in  Parisian  circles.  But 
for  a  certain  toughness  and  roughness,  of  undoubted 
English  origin,  which  the  young  fellows  began  to  notice 
more  when  they  had  learned  to  speaK  English  better, 
the  community  in  which  they  found  themselves  seemed, 
in  their  lively  and  hopeful  eyes,  to  have  been  made  to 
order  out  of  the  imagination  of  Rousseau  or  of  Fenelon. 
They  were  equally  delighted  with  the  external  aspect 
and  the  interior  meaning  of  the  things  around  them. 
The  Comte  de  Segur  had  seen  peasants  at  the  opera ; 
before  he  wrote  his  Memoirs  he  had  lived  to  see  the 
extemporised  villages  which  the  loyalty  and  gallantry 
of  Prince  Potemkin  constructed  and  decorated  at  each 
stage  of  the  Empress  Catherine's  famous  voyage  through 
her  Southern  dominions ;  but  in  his  long  and  chequered 
existence  he  met  with  nothing  which  so  pleased  him  as 
what  he  espied  along  the  high  roads  of  Delaware,  New 
Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania.    "Sometimes,"  he  wrote,  "in 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  53 

the  midst  of  vast  forests,  with  majestic  trees  which  the 
axe  had  never  touched,  I  was  transported  in  idea  to  the 
remote  times  when  the  first  navigators  set  their  feet  on 
that  unknown  hemisphere.  Sometimes  I  was  admiring 
a  lovely  valley,  carefully  tilled,  with  the  meadows  full  of 
cattle ;  the  houses  clean,  elegant,  painted  in  bright  and 
varied  colours,  and  standing  in  little  gardens  behind 
pretty  fences.  And  then,  further  on,  after  other  masses 
of  woods,  I  came  to  populous  hamlets,  and  towns  where 
everything  betokened  the  perfection  of  civilisation, — 
schools,  churches,  universities.  Indigence  and  vulgarity 
nowhere ;  abundance,  comfort,  and  urbanity  everywhere. 
The  inhabitants,  each  and  all,  exhibited  the  unassuming 
and  quiet  pride  of  men  who  have  no  master,  who  see 
nothing  above  them  except  the  law,  and  who  are  free 
from  the  vanity,  the  servility,  and  the  prejudices  of  our 
European  societies.  That  is  the  picture  which,  through- 
out my  whole  journey,  never  ceased  to  interest  and 
surprise  me." 

It  is  a  scene  depicted  by  a  foreigner  and  an  enthu- 
siast, who  had  no  mind  to  observe  faults.  But  de  Segur 
and  his  comrades,  though  they  were  young  when  they 
visited  America,  recorded  or  reprinted  their  impressions 
of  it  after  an  experience  of  men  and  cities  such  as  falls 
to  the  lot  of  few.  Lafayette,  whatever  might  be  the 
misfortunes  of  his  middle  life,  had  sooner  or  later  seen 
a  great  deal  of  the  world  under  the  pleasant  guise  which 
it  presents  to  the  hero  of  a  perpetual  ovation.  Mathieu 
Dumas,  who,  before  he  was  Lieutenant-General  of  the 
armies  of  King  Louis  the  Eighteenth,  served  Napoleon 
long  and  faithfully,  had  marched,  and  fought,  and  ad- 
ministered all  Europe  over  in  the  train  of  the  most 
ubiquitous  of  conquerors.  And  yet,  after  all  had  been 
tried  and  tasted,  the  remote  and  ever-receding  picture 
of  their  earliest  campaign  stood  out  as  their  favourite 
page  in  the  book  of  memory.  They  liked  the  country, 
and  they  never  ceased  to  love  the  people.  They  could 
not  forget  how,  in  "  one  of  those  towns  which  were  soon 
to  be  cities,  or  villages  which  already  were  little  towns," 


54  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

they  would  alight  from  horseback  in  a  street  bright  with 
flowers  and  foliage.  They  would  lift  the  knocker  of 
shining  brass  which  pleased  eyes  accustomed  at  home 
to  the  shabbiness  and  misery  of  houses  below  the  rank 
of  a  palace  guarded  by  a  gigantic  Swiss  porter,  whose 
business  it  was  to  usher  in  the  high-born  and  suppress 
the  humble  guest.  And  behind  the  door,  gay  with 
paint  which  never  was  allowed  to  lose  its  gloss,  they 
were  sure  to  meet  with  a  hospitality  that  knew  no  respect 
of  persons.  "  Simplicity  of  manners,"  said  Lafayette, 
"  the  desire  to  oblige,  and  a  mild  and  quiet  equality  are 
the  rule  everywhere.  The  inns  are  very  different  from 
those  of  Europe.  The  master  and  mistress  sit  down 
with  you,  and  do  the  honours  of  an  excellent  dinner ; 
and,  when  you  depart,  there  is  no  bargaining  over  the 
bill.  If  you  are  not  in  the  mind  to  go  to  a  tavern,  you 
can  soon  find  a  country-house  where  it  is  enough  to  be 
a  good  American  in  order  to  be  entertained  as  in  Europe 
we  entertain  a  friend." 

Those  were  not  the  manners  of  Europe,  and  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  to  a  special  degree  they  were  not  then  the 
manners  of  Great  Britain.  The  wife  of  General  Riedesel 
passed  across  our  island  on  her  way  to  rejoin  her 
husband  in  Canada,  and  share  his  dangers  in  the  field. 
In  London  she  was  exposed  to  every  form  of  molesta- 
tion, from  curiosity  to  gross  incivility,  on  the  part  of  the 
idlers  and  loungers.  It  was  enough  for  them  that  she 
was  foreign ;  and  they  did  not  trouble  themselves  to 
ask  whether  or  not  she  was  connected  with  a  foreigner 
who  had  left  his  country  in  order  to  fight  their  coun- 
try's battles.  At  Bristol  she  went  out  walking  under 
the  escort  of  the  Mayor's  niece,  in  a  favourite  dress 
which  she  had  brought  with  her  from  Germany.  A 
mob  of  more  than  a  hundred  sailors  gathered  round, 
pointing  at  her  with  their  fingers,  and  shouting  to  her 
an  epithet  which  is  the  most  cruel  insult  that  can  be 
offered  to  a  woman.  The  poor  lady  was  so  horrified 
that,  though  she  could  ill  afford  the  loss,  she  gave  her 
gown  away. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  55 

Nor,  on  the  point  of  international  hospitality,  was 
there  much  to  choose  between  town  and  country.  Herr 
Moritz  of  Berlin,  who  ventured  on  a  walking  tour  up 
the  valley  of  the  Thames  towards  the  close  of  the 
American  war,  found  that  a  clergyman  and  man  of 
letters,  presumed  by  the  public  to  go  afoot  because  he 
could  not  afford  to  ride,  must  still  expect  as  scurvy 
entertainment  as  in  the  days  of  Joseph  Andrews.  This 
gentleman  in  the  course  of  his  first  stage  between  Lon- 
don and  Oxford  complained  that,  when  he  rested  in 
the  shade  by  the  road-side  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  he 
excited  in  the  passers-by  a  sort  of  contemptuous  pity, 
which  women  expressed  by  the  exclamation  of  "  Good 
God  Almighty !  "  and  men  by  something  stronger.  In 
Windsor  he  was  turned  away  from  the  door  of  one  inn, 
and  sworn  at  to  his  face  at  another.  At  the  taverns 
along  the  Henley  road  he  was  denied  a  lodging,  and 
did  not  dare  even  to  ask  for  one  in  the  town  itself.  The 
village  of  Nuneham  refused  him  a  bed,  a  supper,  and 
even  a  crust  of  bread  with  his  ale.  When  he  penetrated 
further  into  the  heart  of  the  country,  he  was  hissed 
through  the  streets  of  Burton,  where  he  had  hoped  to 
stay  the  night ;  and  at  Matlock  he  was  most  churlishly 
treated  because,  from  ignorance  of  English  customs, 
he  omitted  to  drink  the  health  of  the  company.  "  They 
showed  me  into  the  kitchen,"  he  says  on  another  occa- 
sion, "  and  set  me  down  to  sup  at  the  same  table  with 
some  soldiers  and  the  servants.  I  now,  for  the  first 
time,  found  myself  in  one  of  those  kitchens  which  I  had 
so  often  read  of  in  Fielding's  fine  novels,  and  which 
certainly  give  one,  on  the  whole,  a  very  accurate  idea 
of  English  manners.  While  I  was  eating,  a  postchaise 
drove  up,  and  in  a  moment  the  whole  house  was  set 
in  motion,  in  order  to  receive,  with  all  due  respect, 
guests  who  were  supposed  to  be  persons  of  consequence. 
The  gentlemen,  however,  called  for  nothing  but  a  couple 
of  pots  of  beer,  and  then  drove  away  again.  The  people 
of  the  house  behaved  to  them  with  all  possible  attention, 
because  they  came  in  a  postchaise."    Herr  Moritz  every- 


56  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

where  was  struck  by  the  different  welcome  vouchsafed 
to  those  whom  the  innkeepers  styled  "  Sir,"  and  those 
who,  like  himself  and  humbler  people,  were  addressed 
as  "  Master." 

Mathieu  Dumas  saw  the  difference  between  English 
and  American  manners.  "  In  spite,"  he  says,  "  of  the 
resemblance  in  language,  in  costume,  in  customs,  in 
religion,  and  in  the  principles  of  government,  a  distinct 
national  character  is  forming  itself.  The  colonists  are 
milder  and  more  tolerant,  more  hospitable,  and  in  gen- 
eral more  communicative  than  the  English.  The  Eng- 
lish, in  their  turn,  reproach  them  with  levity  and  too 
keen  a  taste  for  pleasure."  But  the  contrast  was  not 
with  England  alone  among  European  nations ;  and  the 
cause  lay  deep  in  the  favourable  conditions  of  life 
which  prevailed  in  the  New  World,  and  were  wanting 
to  the  Old.  "  An  observer,"  wrote  de  Segur,  "  fresh 
from  our  magnificent  cities,  and  the  airs  of  our  young 
men  of  fashion,  —  who  has  compared  the  luxury  of  our 
upper  classes  with  the  coarse  dress  of  our  peasants, 
and  the  rags  of  our  innumerable  poor,  —  is  surprised, 
on  reaching  the  United  States,  by  the  entire  absence 
of  the  extremes  both  of  opulence  and  misery.  All 
Americans  whom  we  met  wore  clothes  of  good  material. 
Their  free,  frank,  and  familiar  address,  equally  removed 
from  uncouth  discourtesy  and  from  artificial  politeness, 
betokened  men  who  were  proud  of  their  own  rights 
and  respected  those  of  others." 

On  a  question  of  manners  there  is  no  appeal  from 
the  judgment  of  people  who  came  from  the  very  centre 
of  that  combination  of  culture  and  talent  with  rank  and 
breeding  which  marked  French  society  in  the  age  pre- 
ceding the  Revolution.  Lafayette  had  been  a  Black 
Musketeer  while  still  a  schoolboy,  and  had  refused  a 
post  in  a  royal  household  when  he  married  at  what  was 
then,  for  a  scion  of  the  French  nobility,  the  mature  age 
of  sixteen.  But  his  independence  was  not  to  his  disad- 
vantage, and  the  world  of  fashion  made  all  the  more  of 
him  on  account  of  the  flavour  of  elegant  republicanism 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  57 

which  hung  about  him.  De  Segur,  when  in  garrison, 
served  in  a  regiment  containing  such  sub-lieutenants  as 
the  Prince  de  Lambesc,  Master  of  the  Horse  of  France, 
and  the  son  of  the  Due  de  Fleury,  who  was  the  First 
Gentleman  of  the  Chamber.  In  Paris  he  had  been  hon- 
oured by  the  intimacy  of  Marmontel  and  d'Alembert. 
And  yet  Lafayette  and  de  Segur  joined  in  testifying 
that  they  never  met  truer  gentlemen  than  their  hosts  in 
the  New  England  villages,  and  than  their  brethren  in 
arms  who  sat  round  the  frugal  table  of  General  Wash- 
ington. 

The  character  which  they  admired  was  home-grown, 
but  it  bore  transportation  well.  The  American  qualities 
of  that  plain  and  strong  generation  did  not  require 
American  surroundings  to  set  them  off  to  advantage. 
John  Adams  began  life  as  a  rural  schoolmaster,  and 
continued  it  as  a  rural  lawyer.  He  never  saw  anything 
which  Lord  Chesterfield  or  Madame  du  Deffand  would 
have  recognised  as  society,  until  he  dined  with  Turgot 
Ao  meet  a  member  of  the  family  of  de  Rochefoucauld. 
He  learned  French  as  he  went  along,  and  at  the  bottom 
of  his  heart  had  no  great  love  or  respect  for  French- 
men. But  soon  after  he  began  his  sojourn  in  France, 
he  became  at  home  in  the  diplomatic  world ;  and  before 
long  he  had  acquired  there  a  commanding  influence, 
which  proved  to  be  of  inestimable  value  to  his  country. 
Franklin  in  London  had  no  official  position  except  that 
of  agent  for  a  colonial  Assembly,  and  no  previous  know- 
ledge of  English  society  except  what  he  had  picked  up 
as  a  youth,  working  for  a  printer,  and  lodging  in  Little 
Britain  at  three  and  sixpence  a  week.  And  yet  he  was 
welcomed  by  all,  of  every  rank,  whom  he  cared  to  meet, 
and  by  some  great  people  with  whose  attentions,  and 
with  a  good  deal  of  whose  wine,  he  would  have  willingly 
dispensed.1     When  he  took  up  his  abode  in  Paris,  he 

1  "  We  have  lost  Lord  Clare  from  the  Board  of  Trade,"  Franklin  wrote 
in  July,  1768.  "  He  took  me  home  from  Court  the  Sunday  before  his 
removal,  that  I  might  dine  with  him,  as  he  said,  alone,  and  talk  over 
American  affairs.     He  gave  me  a  great  deal  of  flummery;    saying  that, 


58  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

continued  to  live  as  he  had  lived  in  Philadelphia  till  the 
age  of  seventy,  —  talking  his  usual  talk,  and  dressed  in 
sober  broadcloth.  And  yet  he  became  the  rage,  and  set 
the  fashion,  in  circles  which  gave  undisputed  law  to  the 
whole  of  polite  Europe  in  matters  where  taste  and  be- 
haviour were  concerned. 

Successes  of  this  nature,  however  remarkable,  may, 
in  the  case  of  Franklin  and  Adams,  be  partly  accounted 
for  by  reasons  which  hold  good  in  all  times  and  in  all 
companies.  The  hero,  as  Emerson  says,  is  suffered  to 
be  himself ;  and  society  does  not  insist  on  his  conform- 
ing to  the  usages  which  it  imposes  on  the  rank  and  file 
of  its  members.  But  the  honest  people  who  gave  a  bed 
and  a  supper  to  the  young  French  colonel  at  every  stop- 
ping place  between  Delaware  Bay  and  West  Point  were 
not  all  of  them  heroes  or  sages ;  and  the  agreeable  im- 
pression which  they  produced  upon  their  foreign  guests 
must  be  explained  by  other  causes.  The  fact  is  that 
travellers  from  the  countries  of  continental  Europe  found 
in  America  exactly  what  they  had  been  searching  after 
eagerly,  and  with  some  sense  of  disappointment,  in 
England.  Anglomania  was  then  at  its  height ;  and  the 
noblest  form  of  that  passion  led  men  to  look  for,  and 
imitate,  the  mode  of  life  which  must  surely,  (so  they 
hoped  and  argued,)  be  the  product  of  such  laws  and 
such  freedom  as  ours.  Of  simplicity  and  frugality,  of 
manliness  and  independence,  of  religious  conviction  and 
sense  of  duty,  there  was  abundance  in  our  island,  if  they 
had  known  where  to  seek  it.  In  every  commercial  town 
from  Aberdeen  to  Falmouth,  and  on  many  a  country- 
side, the  day's  work  was  being  done  by  men  of  the  right 
stamp,  with  something  of  old  manners,  but  of  solid 
modern  knowledge ;  close  attendants  at  church,  or,  in 
more  cases  still,  at  chapel ;   writing  without  effort  and 

though  at  my  Examination  I  answered  some  of  his  questions  a  little  pertly, 
yet  he  liked  me  for  the  spirit  I  showed  in  defence  of  my  country.  At  part- 
ing, after  we  had  drunk  a  bottle  and  a  half  of  claret  each,  he  hugged  and 
kissed  me,  protesting  that  he  had  never  in  his  life  met  with  a  man  he  was 
so  much  in  love  with." 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  59 

pretension  a  singularly  clear  and  vigorous  English,  and 
making  the  money  which  they  spent,  and  a  good  deal 
more,  by  their  own  labour  and  their  own  enterprise. 
From  them  came  Howard  and  Raikes,  Arkwright  and 
Wedgwood,  Watt  and  Brindley.  For  them  Wesley  and 
John  Newton  preached,  and  Adam  Smith  and  Arthur 
Young  wrote.  Intent  on  their  business,  they  yet  had 
time  to  spare  for  schemes  of  benevolence  and  general 
utility;  and  they  watched  the  conduct  of  State  affairs 
with  deep  and  growing  interest,  and  with  indignation 
which  was  mostly  silent.  For  their  opportunity  was 
not  yet;  and  they  were  creating  and  maturing  quietly, 
and  as  it  were  unconsciously,  that  public  opinion  of  their 
class  which  grew  in  strength  during  the  coming  fifty 
years,  and  then  for  another  fifty  years  was  destined  to 
rule  the  country.  They  were  the  salt  of  the  earth  in 
those  days  of  corruption ;  but  they  were  not  the  people 
whom  a  gentleman  from  Versailles,  visiting  London  with 
letters  of  introduction  from  the  Due  de  Choiseul  or  the 
Chevalier  de  Boufflers,  would  be  very  likely  to  meet. 
They  lived  apart  from  high  society,  and  did  not  copy  its 
habits  or  try  to  catch  its  tone ;  nor  did  they  profess  the 
theory  of  an  equality  which,  as  their  strong  sense  told 
them,  they  could  not  successfully  assert  in  practice. 
Preserving  their  self-respect,  and  keeping  within  their 
own  borders,  they  recognised  that  the  best  of  the  world, 
whether  they  liked  it  or  not,  was  made  for  others.  How- 
ever little  they  might  care  to  put  the  confession  into 
words,  they  acted,  and  wrote,  and  spoke  as  men  aware 
that  the  government  of  their  nation  was  in  the  hands  of 
£an  aristocracy  to  which  they  themselves  did  not  belong. 
It  was  far  otherwise  in  America.  The  people  in  the 
settled  districts  had  emerged  from  a  condition  of  cruel 
hardship  to  comfort,  security,  and  as  much  leisure  as 
their  temperament,  already  the  same  as  now,  would  per- 
mit them  to  take.  Their  predecessors  had  fought  and 
won  their  battle  against  hunger  and  cold  and  pestilence, 
against  savage  beasts  and  savage  men.  As  time  went 
on,  they  had  confronted  and  baffled  a  subtler  and  more 


60  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

deadly  adversary  in  the  power  of  the  later  Stuarts.  As 
soon  as  the  exiles  had  conquered  from  the  wilderness  a 
country  which  was  worth  possessing,  the  statesmen  of 
the  Restoration  stepped  in  to  destroy  their  liberties,  to 
appropriate  their  substance,  and  to  impose  on  them  the 
form  of  Church  government  to  escape  from  which  they 
had  crossed  the  ocean.  Those  varied  and  protracted 
struggles  had  left  a  mark  in  the  virile  and  resolute 
temper  of  the  existing  generation,  in  their  readiness  to 
turn  a  hand  to  any  sort  of  work  on  however  sudden  an 
emergency,  and  in  their  plain  and  unpretentious  habits. 
But  there  was  nothing  uncivilised  or  unlettered  about 
them.  In  their  most  bitter  straits,  while  the  existence 
of  the  community  was  still  at  hazard,  the  founders  of 
the  colony  had  taken  measures  for  securing  those  su- 
preme benefits  to  the  individual  which  in  their  eyes 
were  the  true  end  and  object  of  all  combined  human 
effort.  By  the  time  they  had  reaped  their  fifth  harvest 
on  the  shores  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay,  they  had  es- 
tablished a  public  school  at  Cambridge;  and  the  next 
year  it  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  college,  with  a 
library  and  something  of  an  endowment.  Again  a 
twelvemonth,  and  the  first  sheet  was  drawn  from  be- 
neath a  New  England  printing-press ;  and  eight  years 
later  on,  in  1647,  ft  was  ordered  that  every  township, 
"  after  the  Lord  hath  increased  them  to  the  number  of 
fifty  householders,  shall  appoint  one  within  their  towns 
to  teach  all  such  children  as  shall  resort  to  him  to  write 
and  read;  and  where  any  town  shall  increase  to  the 
number  of  one  hundred  families,  they  shall  set  up  a 
grammar  school,  the  masters  thereof  being  able  to 
instruct  youth  so  far  as  they  may  be  fitted  for  the 
university." 

Not  otherwise  did  the  Scottish  statesmen  of  1696 
read  their  duty,  with  great  results  to  the  future  of  their 
people,  ancient  and  immovable  as  were  the  limits  by 
which  that  future  was  circumscribed  and  confined.  But 
the  lawgivers  of  the  Puritan  colonies  had  a  blank  parch- 
ment before  them,  and  they  were  equal  to  the  task  of 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  6 1 

ruling  the  lines  along  which  the  national  character  was 
to  run.  The  full  fruit  of  their  work  was  seen  four  gen- 
erations afterwards  in  the  noble  equality  of  universal 
industry,  and  of  mutual  respect,  which  prevailed  among 
a  population  of  whom  none  were  idle  and  none  were 
ignorant.  " There,"  wrote  de  Segur,  "no  useful  pro- 
fession is  the  subject  of  ridicule  or  contempt  Idleness 
alone  is  a  disgrace.  Military  rank  and  public  employ- 
ment do  not  prevent  a  person  from  having  a  calling  of 
his  own.  Every  one  there  is  a  tradesman,  a  farmer,  or 
an  artisan.  Those  who  are  less  well  off,  — the  servants, 
labourers,  and  sailors,  —  unlike  men  of  the  lower  classes 
in  Europe,  are  treated  with  a  consideration  which  they 
merit  by  the  propriety  of  their  conduct  and  their  be- 
haviour. At  first  I  was  surprised,  on  entering  a  tavern, 
to  find  it  kept  by  a  captain,  a  major,  or  a  colonel,  who 
was  equally  ready  to  talk,  and  to  talk  well,  about  his 
campaigns,  his  farming  operations,  or  the  market  he 
had  got  for  his  produce  or  his  wares.  And  I  was  still 
more  taken  aback  when  —  after  I  had  answered  the 
questions  put  to  me  about  my  family,  and  had  informed 
the  company  that  my  father  was  a  General  and  a  Min- 
ister of  State  —  they  went  on  to  inquire  what  was  his 
profession  or  his  business." 

There  could  be  no  personal  sympathy,  and  no  identity 
of  public  views,  between  the  governors  in  Downing 
Street  and  the  governed  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
England.  On  the  one  hand  was  a  commonwealth  con- 
taining no  class  to  which  a  man  was  bound  to  look  up, 
and  none  on  which  he  was  tempted  to  look  down, 
where  there  was  no  source  of  dignity  except  labour,  and 
no  luxury  but  a  plenty  which  was  shared  by  all.  On 
the  other  hand  was  a  ruling  caste,  each  member  of 
which,  unless  by  some  rare  good  fortune,  was  taught 
by  precept  and  example,  from  his  schooldays  onwards, 
that  the  greatest  good  was  to  live  for  show  and  pleas- 
ure ;  that  the  whole  duty  of  senatorial  man  was  to  draw 
as  much  salary  as  could  be  got  in  return  for  as  little 
work  as  might  be  given  for  it;  and  that  socially  and 


62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

politically  the  many  were  not  to  be  reckoned  as  stand- 
ing on  a  level  with  the  few.  The  muniment-rooms  of 
our  old  families  are  rich  in  curious  notices  of  the  educa- 
tional conditions  under  which  British  statesmen  of  that 
day  formed  their  earliest  ideas  of  the  social  relations 
that  ought  to  exist  between  man  and  man.  Among 
them  is  a  story  dating  from  the  time  when  the  memory 
of  Charles  Fox  was  still  fresh  at  Eton.  One  George 
Harlow,  in  January,  1779,  thus  wrote  from  the  Queen's 
Palace  to  Sir  Michael  de  Fleming. 

"  Give  me  leave  to  call  to  your  remembrance  an  advent- 
ure which  happened  about  13  or  14  years  ago  at  Wind- 
sor. Myself  and  a  friend  went  from  Richmond  lodge  to 
Windsor  to  see  the  Castle.  We  dined  at  the  Swan  Inn, 
and  looking  out  of  the  window  we  saw  a  number  of  Eton 
scholars  coming  over  the  bridge,  and,  as  they  passed 
the  window,  you,  Sir  Michael,  was  pleased  peremptory 
to  demand  my  name,  and  I  not  being  acquainted  with 
the  manners  of  Eton  scholars,  and  likewise  stranger  to 
your  quality,  refused  to  satisfy  your  curiosity,  on  which 
you  and  I  believe  a  score  of  your  schoolfellows  jumped 
in  at  the  window,  and  threatened  destruction  to  us,  if  we 
did  not  resolve  you.  My  friend  told  you  his  name,  but 
before  I  had  time  to  reflect  you  took  up  my  whip,  and 
with  the  butt  end  of  it  levelled  a  blow  at  my  head,  the 
marks  of  which  I  now  carry,  which  stunned  me  for  some 
minutes.  When  I  recovered  you  was  standing  before 
me,  and  told  me  I  was  not  hurt  but  that  I  bled  damna- 
bly. However  you  obliged  me  to  tell  my  name,  which 
done  you  swore  I  was  a  good  fellow,  and  offered  me  any 
recompense  for  my  broken  head,  and  said  you  was  sorry 
for  what  had  happened.  I  was  lately  telling  this  story 
to  a  friend  who  advised  me  to  make  myself  known,  not 
doubting  but  you  would  use  your  interest  to  remove  me 
to  a  place  of  less  confinement  than  I  have  at  present  in 
his  Majesty's  household.  If  I  should  be  so  happy  as  to 
meet  your  favour,  and  succeed,  I  shall  for  ever  remember 
you  and  the  adventure  at  Windsor  with  pleasure,  and 
consider  my  scar  as  the  promoter  of  my  happiness." 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  6$ 

At  the  period  to  which  the  above  story  refers  the  great 
public  school  of  England  was  passing  through  a  singular 
phase  of  its  history.  The  stern  and  often  cruel  educa- 
tion of  the  seventeenth  century  was  obsolete,  and  had 
been  succeeded  by  a  laxity  of  manners  to  which  the  fin- 
ishing touch  was  put  by  Lord  Holland.  In  the  course 
of  a  tour  on  the  Continent,  Charles  Fox  had  been  in- 
ducted by  his  father  into  the  practice  of  pleasant  vices ; 
and,  on  their  return  to  England,  he  went  back  to  Eton 
with  unlimited  money,  and  the  tastes  of  a  rake  and  a 
gambler.  Nature  had  endowed  the  boy  with  qualities 
which  dazzled  and  bewitched  his  comrades,  and  excused 
him  in  the  eyes  of  his  superiors.  His  influence  in  the 
school  was  unbounded.  Lord  Shelburne  gave  it  as  his 
opinion  that  the  great  change  for  the  worse  which  had 
taken  place  among  the  youth  of  the  upper  classes  dated 
from  the  time  that  the  Foxes  were  predominant  at  Eton. 
It  was  the  exaggerated  statement  of  one  who  was  no 
friend  to  the  family  ;  for  it  left  out  of  sight  the  consider- 
ation that,  bad  as  Lord  Holland's  conduct  was,  others 
than  he  were  responsible  for  the  morality  of  the  school. 
Charles  Fox  would  have  followed  a  better  path  if  it  had 
been  pointed  out  by  instructors  whom  he  loved  and  rev- 
erenced. And,  at  the  very  worst,  a  few  private  inter- 
views with  a  strong-willed  and  stout-armed  headmaster 
should  have  convinced  the  most  precocious  scapegrace 
that  Eton  was  not  Spa  or  Paris. 

But  discipline,  in  any  true  sense  of  the  word,  there 
was  none.  Clever  boys  learned  to  write  Latin,  as  it  was 
learned  nowhere  else.  That,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  was 
the  persuasion  of  Charles  Fox ;  and  his  own  productions 
go  to  prove  it,  even  in  the  judgment  of  those  whose 
allegiance  is  due  to  other  nurseries  of  classical  cult- 
ure. His  school  exercises,  both  in  prose  and  metre, 
are  marked  by  a  facility  of  handling,  and  a  sense  of 
personal  enjoyment  on  the  part  of  the  writer,  which 
are  not  always  perceptible  in  the  exquisite  imitations 
of  Greek  and  Roman  poets  composed  by  the  scholars 
of   a   later   time.     Nor    did   Latin   verse   comprise   all 


64  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

that  was  to  be  learned  at  Eton.  The  authorities  were 
provident  enough  to  teach  elocution  to  lads  not  a  few  of 
whom  inherited,  as  part  of  their  patrimony,  the  right  of 
sitting  for  a  borough,  or  the  obligation  of  standing  for  a 
county.  But  there  the  duty  of  a  teacher  towards  his 
pupils,  as  he  himself  read  it,  ended.  The  boys  feared 
the  masters  less  than  the  masters  feared  the  boys,  and 
with  good  cause ;  for  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  was 
not  popular  among  these  Whigs  of  sixteen,  and  an  Eton 
rebellion  was  a  very  serious  matter.  )^How  agreeably 
a  youth,  who  had  a  tolerant  tutor  and  a  festive  dame, 
might  pass  the  later  years  of  his  school  life  is  narrated 
in  a  letter  written  in  the  summer  quarter  of  1767.  "I 
believe  Mr.  Roberts  is  fixed  upon  to  be  my  tutor,  who  is 
the  only  man  in  the  place  I  have  any  regard  for.  I 
sincerely  think  him  the  most  sensible  man  I  ever  came 
near  in  my  life,  and  has  behaved  himself  so  good  natured 
to  me  all  through  the  Remove  that  I  shall  always  have 
a  very  great  regard  for  him.  Mrs.  Sturgess  is  very  good 
natured  to  the  boys,  and  behaves  herself  very  freely 
amongst  us ;  now  and  then  gives  a  bottle  of  wine  or  a 
bowl  of  punch  which  she  makes  very  good.  I  always 
wish  your  company  to  partake.  In  short  we  are  very 
happy.  I  take  no  other  amusement  here  but  tennis,  never 
enter  the  billiard  rooms.  Hulse  is  our  best  player.  He 
was  to  play  a  set  with  a  gentleman  last  week  for  twenty 
guineas,  but  the  gentleman  was  afraid  to  play  him."1 

The  senators  of  the  future,  when  they  left  school  for 
college,  found  themselves  in  a  place  where  boundless 
indulgence  was  shown  towards  the  frailties  of  the  power- 
ful and  the  high  born.  The  Duke  of  Grafton,  in  1768, 
was  in  the  very  depths  of  a  scandal  of  which  Junius  took 
care  that  all  the  world  should  be  cognisant ;  and  in  the 
course  of  that  very  year  his  Grace  was  unanimously 
chosen  as  Chancellor  for  the  University  of  Cambridge. 

1  The  quotations  relating  to  Eton  are  from  the  Historical  Manuscripts 
Commission,  Twelfth  Report,  Appendix,  Part  VII.  A  picturesque  account 
of  a  school  riot,  which  occurred  there  just  after  the  close  of  the  American 
war,  is  given  in  the  Fourteenth  Report,  Appendix,  Part  I. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  65 

The  Earl  of  Sandwich  had  already  run  a  dead  heat  for 
the  High  Stewardship  of  the  same  educational  body. 
The  University  was  saved  from  the  ineffaceable  disgrace 
which  would  have  attended  his  success  by  the  votes 
of  the  country  clergy,  among  whom  his  opponent  Lord 
Hardwicke,  a  nobleman  of  blameless  character,  most 
fortunately  had,  as  we  are  told,  "much  connection.,,  1 
Gibbon,  in  three  out  of  his  six  autobiographies,  has  re- 
lated how  the  fourteen  months  which  he  spent  at  Oxford 
were  totally  lost  for  every  purpose  of  study  and  improve- 
ment, at  a  college  where  the  dull  and  deep  potations  of 
the  fellows  excused  the  brisk  intemperance  of  youth,  and 
the  velvet  cap  of  a  Gentleman  Commoner  was  the  cap 
of  liberty.  His  account  of  Magdalen  is  illustrated  by 
the  experience  of  Lord  Malmesbury,  who  states  in  less 
finished  phrases  that  the  life  among  his  own  set  at  Merton 
was  a  close  imitation  of  high  life  in  London.  Fox  was 
at  Hertford  College,  where  he  read  hard ;  and  where, 
poor  fellow,  he  would  have  gladly  remained  to  read  if 
his  father  had  not  drawn  him  back  again  into  the  vortex 
of  idleness  and  dissipation.  Dr.  Newcome,  the  Vice- 
Principal,  wrote  to  Charles  that,  in  the  absence  of  the 
one  industrious  undergraduate,  all  pretence  of  mathemat- 
ical lectures  had  been  abandoned  for  the  others.  After 
such  a  preliminary  training  a  young  man  of  fortune  was 
started  on  the  grand  tour,  to  be  initiated  in  the  free-, 
masonry  of  luxury  and  levity  which  then  embraced  the 
whole  fashionable  society  of  Europe.  If  he  was  his  own 
master  he  travelled  alone,  or  with  a  band  of  congenial 
companions.  If  his  father  was  alive,  he  made  his  voyage 
under  the  ostensible  superintendence  of  a  tutor,  whom  he 
had  either  subjugated  or  quarrelled  with,  by  the  time  the 
pair  had  traversed  one  or  two  foreign  capitals.  A  youth 
so  spent  was  a  bad  apprenticeship  for  the  vocation  of 

1  Sandwich  likewise,  in  the  course  of  time,  established  a  connection  with 
the  clergy  of  a  sort  peculiar  to  himself.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Hackman,  who 
wanted  to  marry  one  of  his  mistresses,  was  hanged  for  murdering  her;  and 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Dodd,  who  was  hanged  for  forgery,  according  to  Walpole  had 
married  another. 


66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

governing  with  insight  and  sympathy  remote  colonies 
inhabited  by  a  hardy,  a  simple,  and  a  religious  people. 

That  the  pictures  drawn  in  these  pages  are  not  over- 
coloured  will  be  admitted  by  those  who  compare  the 
correspondence  of  George  the  Third  and  Lord  North 
with  Washington's  confidential  letters,  or  the  Last  Jour- 
nals of  Horace  Walpole  with  the  diary  of  John  Adams; 
—  by  those  who  contrast  the  old  age  of  Lord  Holland 
and  of  Franklin,  or  turn  from  the  boyhood  and  youth 
of  Charles  Fox  and  Lord  Carlisle  to  the  strait  and 
stern  upbringing  of  the  future  liberators,  creators,  and 
rulers  of  America.  A  reader  of  our  race  may  well  take 
pride  in  the  account  which  the  founders  of  the  great 
Republic  have  given  of  themselves  in  documents  some- 
times as  little  intended  for  publication  as  were  the 
confidences  of  George  Selwyn  and  the  Duke  of  Queens- 
berry.  There  he  may  see  the  records  of  their  birth, 
their  nurture,  and  their  early  wrestling  with  the  world. 
There  he  may  admire  the  avidity  with  which,  while 
they  worked  for  their  daily  bread,  they  were  snatching 
on  every  side  at  scraps  of  a  higher  education,  and 
piecing  them  together  into  a  culture  admirably  suited 
to  the  requirements  of  the  high  affairs  of  administra- 
tion, and  diplomacy,  and  war  to  which  their  destiny  on 
a  sudden  was  to  call  them.  But  though  they  had  larger 
minds  and  stronger  wills  than  the  common,  their  lot 
was  the  same  as  the  enormous  majority  of  their  coun- 
trymen in  the  Northern  colonies;  and  their  story,  as 
far  as  their  circumstances  and  chances  in  life  were 
concerned,  is  the  story  of  all. 

The  father  of  John  Adams  was  a  labouring  farmer, 
who  wrought  hard  to  live,  and  who  did  much  public 
work  for  nothing.  His  eminent  son  put  on  record  that 
"  he  was  an  officer  of  militia,  afterwards  a  deacon  of 
the  church,  and  a  Selectman  of  the  town;  almost  all 
the  business  of  the  town  being  managed  by  him  in  that 
department  for  twenty  years  together ;  a  man  of  strict 
piety,  and  great  integrity;  much  esteemed  and  beloved, 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  6? 

wherever  he  was  known,  which  was  not  far,  his  sphere 
of  life  not  being  extensive."  He  left  behind  him  prop- 
erty valued  at  thirteen  hundred  pounds,  and  he  had 
made  it  a  prime  object  to  give  the  most  promising  of 
his  children  that  college  education  which  he  himself 
had  missed.  In  those  last  particulars,  and  in  much 
else,  he  was  just  such  another  as  the  father  of  Thomas 
Carlyle ;  but  there  was  this  difference,  that  the  elder 
John  Adams,  with  his  hard  hands  and  his  few  score 
pounds  a  year,  lived  in  a  society  where  a  man  knew 
his  own  worth,  and  claimed  and  took  the  place  which 
was  due  to  him.1  Progenitor  of  a  long  line  of  Presi- 
dents and  Ambassadors,  the  old  Selectman  of  Braintree 
town  held  his  head  as  erect  in  every  presence  as  did 
any  of  his  descendants.  His  son,  a  generation  further 
removed  from  the  depressing  influences  of  the  old 
world,  and  driven  by  the  irresistible  instinct  of  a  strong 
man  born  on  the  eve  of  stirring  times,  prepared  himself 
diligently  for  a  high  career  with  a  noble  indifference 
to  the  million  and  one  chances  that  were  against  his 
attaining  it.  While  teaching  in  a  grammar  school,  for 
the  wages  of  a  day  labourer,  he  bound  himself  to  an 
attorney,  and  studied  hard  in  his  remnants  of  leisure. 
For  a  while  his  prospects  seemed  to  him  doleful  enough. 
"  I  long,"  he  wrote,  "to  be  a  master  of  Greek  and  Latin. 
I  long  to  prosecute  the  mathematical  and  philosophical 
sciences.  I  long  to  know  a  little  of  ethics  and  moral 
philosophy.  But  I  have  no  books,  no  time,  no  friends. 
I  must  therefore  be  contented  to  live  and  die  an  igno- 
rant obscure  fellow." 


1  "  Even  for  the  mere  clothes-screens  of  rank  my  father  testified  no 
contempt.  Their  inward  claim  to  regard  was  a  thing  which  concerned 
them,  not  him.  I  love  to  figure  him  addressing  those  men  with  bared 
head  by  the  title  of  '  Your  Honour,'  with  a  manner  respectful  but  unem- 
barrassed; a  certain  manful  dignity  looking  through  his  own  fine  face, 
with  his  noble  grey  head  bent  patiently  to  the  alas!  unworthy." — 
Reminiscences  of  James  Carlyle,  p.  16.  The  beautiful  passage,  (towards 
the  end  of  the  little  biography,)  which  begins  "  he  was  born  and  brought 
up  the  poorest"  might,  even  to  the  figure  of  old  Mr.  Carlyle's  fortune, 
have  been  written  word  for  word  about  the  father  of  John  Adams. 


68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

A   man  who    rails    in   that   strain    against   his   own 
deficiencies  is   seldom   long  in  mending   them.     John 
Adams  read  greedily,  whenever  he  could  lay  his  hand 
on    those    literary    works    which    possessed    sufficient 
weight   and   momentum   to   have    carried   them  across 
the  seas  and  into  Massachusetts,  —  Bacon  and  Boling- 
broke,   Bentley  and   Tillotson  and    Butler ;   as  well  as 
Sydenham  and  Boerhaave,  and  a  whole  course  of  medi- 
cal and  surgical  authorities  which  were  lent  him  by  a 
physician  in  whose  house  he  was  lodging.     After  two 
years  of  this  training  he  became  a  lawyer,  settled  him- 
self at  Braintree,  and  the  very  next  morning  fell  to  work 
upon  his  Justinian.    In  1759,  while  still  three  and  twenty, 
he  rewrote  for  his  own  guidance  the  fable  of  the  choice 
of  Hercules,  with  girls,  guns,  cards,  and  violins  on  the 
one  side,  and  Montesquieu  and  Lord  Hale's  "  History 
of  the  Common  Law"  on  the  other.    A  list  of  the  books 
which  he  had  mastered,  and  which  he  planned  to  master, 
proves  that  his  thoughts  travelled  far  above  the  petty 
litigation  of  county  and  township.     The  field  of  study 
most  congenial  to  him  lay  amidst  those  great  treatises 
on  natural  law  and  civil  law  which  were  the  proper 
nourishment  for  men  who  had  the  constitution  of   an 
empire   latent  in  their  brains.      According  to  his  own 
estimate  he  was  a  visionary  and  a  trifler,  —  too  proud  to 
court  the  leaders  of  the  local  Bar,  and  too  fine  to  gossip 
himself  into  the  good  graces  of  local  clients.     But  his 
comrades,  who  knew  him  as  the  young  know  the  young, 
had  to  seek  beyond  eighteen  hundred  years  of  time,  and 
twice  as  many  miles  of  space,  for  an  historical  character 
with  whom  to  compare  him.    Jonathan  Sewall,  the  close 
ally  and   generous   rival  of   his    early  days,  —  who  in 
later  years  justified  his  Christian  name  by  an  affection 
and  fidelity  proof  against  the  strain  of  a  difference  of 
opinion  concerning  that  Revolution  which  ruined  the 
one  friend  and  raised  the  other  to  the  first  place  in  the 
State,  —  consoled   John  Adams  in  his   obscurity  by  a 
parallel   with    no    less    a   jurist   than    Cicero.      "  Who 
knows,"  Sewall  wrote,  "but  in  future  ages,  when  New 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  69 

England  shall  have  risen  to  its  intended  grandeur,  it 
shall  be  as  carefully  recorded  that  Adams  flourished  in 
the  second  century  after  the  exodus  of  its  first  settlers 
from  Great  Britain,  as  it  now  is  that  Cicero  was  born  in 
the  six  hundred  and  forty-seventh  year  after  the  build- 
ing of  Rome  ?  " 1 

Such  are  the  day-dreams  of  five  and  twenty,  and 
seldom  have  they  resulted  in  as  notable  a  fulfilment. 
John  Adams  was  the  first  who  reached  his  goal  of  those 
young  Americans  whose  aspirations,  trivial  only  to  the 
ignoble,  have  afforded  to  a  great  master  the  theme  for 
some  of  his  most  musical  sentences.  "  The  youth,  in- 
toxicated with  his  admiration  of  a  hero,  fails  to  see  that 
it  is  only  a  projection  of  his  own  soul  which  he  admires. 
In  solitude,  in  a  remote  village,  the  ardent  youth  loiters 
and  mourns.  With  inflamed  eye,  in  this  sleeping  wil- 
derness, he  has  read  the  story  of  the  Emperor  Charles 
the  Fifth,  until  his  fancy  has  brought  home  to  the  sur- 
rounding woods  the  faint  roar  of  cannonades  in  the 
Milanese,  and  marches  in  Germany.  He  is  curious 
concerning  that  man's  day.  What  filled  it?  The 
crowded  orders,  the  stern  decisions,  the  foreign  de- 
spatches, the  Castilian  etiquette.  The  soul  answers : 
1  Behold  his  day  here  !  In  the  sighing  of  these  woods, 
in  the  quiet  of  these  grey  fields,  in  the  cool  breeze  that 
sings  out  of  these  northern  mountains ;  in  the  hopes 
of  the  morning,  the  ennui  of  the  noon,  and  sauntering 
of  the  afternoon ;  in  the  disquieting  comparisons ;  in 
the  regrets  at  want  of  vigour;  in  the  great  idea,  and 
the  puny  execution;  —  behold  Charles  the  Fifth's  day; 
another  yet  the  same  ;  behold  Chatham's,  Hampden's, 
Bayard's,  Alfred's,  Scipio's,  Pericles's  day  —  day  of  all 
that  are  born  of  women.'  "2 

The  young  man's  outward  environment  was  in  strange 
contrast  to  the  ideas  on  which  his  fancy  fed.  For  many 
years  to  come  his  life  was  like  a  sonnet  by  Wordsworth 

1  Sewall  to  Adams,  13th  Feb.,  1760. 

2  Emerson's  oration  at  Dartmouth  College,  July,  1838. 


yO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

done  into  dry  and  rugged  prose.  Slowly,  with  immense 
exertions  of  mind  and  body,  he  built  up  a  leading  prac- 
tice in  the  scattered  and  remote  court-houses  of  the 
rural  districts.  He  pursued  his  livelihood  through  a 
continuous  course  of  rudest  travel.  Side  by  side  with 
passages  of  keen  political  disquisition  and  high-minded 
personal  introspection  his  journal  tells  the  plain  pleas- 
ant narrative  of  his  humble  adventures ;  —  how  he  was 
soaked  in  the  rain,  and  pinched  by  cold,  and  sent  miles 
out  of  his  way  by  a  swollen  ford,  and  lost  for  hours 
amidst  the  interminable  forests ;  where  he  slept,  or  tried 
to  sleep,  after  a  hard  day's  journey,  and  with  what  tire- 
some company  he  had  to  share  his  bedroom ;  where  he 
"  oated,"  and  where  the  best  he  could  do  for  his  little 
mare  was  to  set  her  loose,  up  to  her  shoulders  in  grass, 
in  a  roadside  meadow ;  and  how  he  reached  a  friend's 
house  at  a  quarter  after  twelve  in  the  day,  just  as  they 
had  got  their  Indian  pudding,  and  their  pork  and  greens, 
upon  the  table.  Occupied  as  he  was  in  maintaining  his 
family,  Adams  never  shrank  from  his  turn  of  public 
duty.  He  was  surveyor  of  the  highways  of  Braintree, 
and  a  very  good  surveyor ;  and,  rising  in  due  course 
through  the  official  hierarchy,  he  became  assessor  and 
overseer  of  the  poor,  and  Selectman,  as  his  father  before 
him.  In  1768  he  removed  to  Boston,  which  then  was 
just  of  a  size  with  the  Boston  in  Lincolnshire  of  the 
present  day.  To  his  younger  eyes  it  had  seemed  a 
mighty  capital,  full  of  distractions  and  temptations ; 
and  the  time  never  came  when  he  felt  at  home  in  a 
town,  or  indeed  anywhere  except  among  the  sea-breezes 
and  the  pine-forests  of  "still,  calm,  happy  Braintree." 
"  Who  can  study,"  he  wrote,  "  in  Boston  streets  ?  I 
cannot  raise  my  mind  above  this  crowd  of  men,  women, 
beasts,  and  carriages,  to  think  steadily.  My  attention 
is  solicited  every  moment  by  some  new  object  of  sight, 
or  some  new  sound.  A  coach,  cart,  a  lady,  or  a  priest 
may  at  any  time  disconcert  a  whole  page  of  excellent 
thoughts."  But  his  position  as  a  lawyer,  and  the  grave 
aspect  of  national  affairs, — on  which  his  opinions,  rarely 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  J\ 

and  modestly  expressed,  were  universally  known,  and 
carried  unusual  weight,  — made  it  his  duty  to  establish 
himself  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  superior  courts,  and 
in  the  political  centre  of  the  colony  which  was  soon  to 
become,  for  years  together,  the  political  battle-ground  of 
the  Empire. 

Jonathan  Sewall,  who  already  was  Attorney-General 
of  Massachusetts,  was  commissioned  by  the  Governor 
to  offer  Adams  the  post  of  Advocate-General  in  the 
Court  of  Admiralty.  It  was,  as  he  records,  a  well-paid 
employment,  a  sure  introduction  to  the  most  profitable 
business  in  the  province,  and  a  first  step  on  the  ladder 
of  favour  and  promotion.  But  Charles  Townshend's 
new  custom  duties  were  by  this  time  in  operation ;  and 
Adams,  in  firm  but  respectful  terms,  replied  that  in 
the  unsettled  state  of  the  country  he  could  not  place 
himself  under  an  obligation  of  gratitude  to  the  Govern- 
ment. Four  years  afterwards  he  computed  his  worldly 
wealth,  and  found  that,  after  paying  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  towards  the  purchase  of  his  house  in  town, 
and  after  acquiring  twenty  acres  of  salt-marsh  in  the 
country,  he  was  worth  three  hundred  pounds  in  money. 
He  was  seven  and  thirty.  It  was  the  age  at  which  Thur- 
low  and  Wedderburn  reached  the  rank  of  Solicitor- 
General  ;  and  at  which  Charles  Yorke  thought  himself 
ill-used  because  he  had  been  nothing  higher  than  Attor- 
ney-General. "  This,"  Adams  wrote,  "  is  all  that  my 
most  intense  application  to  study  and  business  has  been 
able  to  accomplish ;  an  application  that  has  more  than 
once  been  very  near  costing  me  my  life,  and  that  has 
so  greatly  impaired  my  health.  Thirty-seven  years,  more 
than  half  the  life  of  man,  are  run  out.  The  remainder 
of  my  days  I  shall  rather  decline  in  sense,  spirit,  and 
activity.  My  season  for  acquiring  knowledge  is  past,  and 
yet  I  have  my  own  and  my  children's  fortunes  to  make." 
That  was  the  reward  which  hitherto  had  fallen  to  the 
share  of  one  who  became  the  ruler  of  the  United  States 
long  before  George  the  Third  had  ceased  to  rule  the 
United  Kingdom,  and  who  survived  until  his  own  son 


72  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

asked  for  his  blessing  on  the  day  when  he,  in  his  turn, 
was  chosen  to  fill  the  same  exalted  office. 

There  was  another  celebrated  colonist  whose  youth 
had  been  fostered  at  a  greater  distance  still  from  the 
lap  of  luxury.  The  inventory  of  the  effects  owned  by 
the  great  great  grandfather  of  John  Adams  showed 
that  there  had  been  a  silver  spoon  in  the  family  four 
generations  back.  But  Franklin  ate  his  breakfast  with 
pewter  out  of  earthenware  until,  when  he  was  already 
a  mature  householder,  his  wife  bought  him  a  China 
bowl  and  a  silver  spoon,  on  the  ground  that  her  hus- 
band deserved  to  live  as  handsomely  as  any  of  his 
neighbours.  If  he  inherited  no  plate,  he  derived  a 
more  valuable  legacy  from  his  ancestors,  who  in  their 
history  and  their  qualities  were  worthy  forerunners  of 
the  most  typical  American  that  ever  lived.  England 
in  the  seventeenth  century  gave,  or  rather  thrust  upon, 
the  New  World  much  of  what  was  staunch  and  true, 
and  much  also  of  what  was  quick-witted  and  enterprising, 
in  her  population.  The  Franklins,  a  Northamptonshire 
clan  of  very  small  freeholders,  among  whom  the  trade 
of  blacksmith  was  as  hereditary  as  in  an  Indian  caste, 
were  good  Protestants  in  the  worst  of  times.  During 
the  reign  of  Queen  Mary  the  head  of  the  household  kept 
his  English  Bible  fastened  with  tapes  beneath  the  seat 
of  a  stool,  and  read  it  aloud  with  the  stool  reversed 
between  his  knees,  while  a  child  stood  in  the  doorway 
to  give  the  alarm  in  case  an  apparitor  from  the  spiritual 
court  was  seen  in  the  street.  Benjamin  Franklin's 
father  was  a  stout  and  zealous  nonconformist ;  and 
when  conventicles  were  forbidden  in  England  by  laws 
cruelly  conceived  and  rigorously  enforced,  he  carried 
his  wife  and  children  to  Massachusetts  in  order  that 
they  might  enjoy  the  exercise  of  their  religion  in  free- 
dom. He  set  up  at  Boston  first  as  a  dyer,  and  then 
as  a  maker  of  soap  and  candles.  The  family  charac- 
ter was  marked  by  native  ingenuity  and  homely  public 
spirit.     One  of  Franklin's  uncles  invented  a  shorthand 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  73 

of  his  own.  Another,  who  remained  at  home  in  North- 
amptonshire, taught  himself  law ;  filled  local  offices  of 
importance ;  was  prime  mover  in  all  useful  undertakings 
in  town  and  county;  and  was  long  remembered  in  his 
village  as  a  benefactor,  an  adviser,  and  (by  the  more 
ignorant)  as  a  reputed  conjurer.  He  set  on  foot  a  sub- 
scription to  provide  a  set  of  chimes,  which  his  nephew 
heard  with  satisfaction  three-quarters  of  a  century  after- 
wards ;  and  he  discovered  a  simple  effective  method  of 
saving  the  common  lands  from  being  drowned  by  the 
river.  "  If  Franklin  says  he  knows  how  to  do  it,  it 
will  be  done,"  was  a  phrase  which  had  passed  into  a 
proverb  for  the  neighbourhood.  He  died  four  years 
to  a  day  before  his  brother's  famous  child  was  born. 
"  Had  he  died  four  years  later,"  it  was  said,  "  one  might 
have  supposed  a  transmigration." 

Benjamin  Franklin  had  a  right  to  be  proud  of  the 
mental  gifts  which  were  born  within  him,  when  he 
looked  back  from  the  height  of  his  fame  to  the  material 
circumstances  which  surrounded  him  on  his  entrance 
into  this  world.  Seldom  did  any  man  who  started  with 
as  little  accomplish  so  much,  if  we  except  certain  of  the 
august  self-seekers  in  history  whose  career  was  carved 
out  at  a  great  cost  of  human  life  and  human  freedom. 
He  had  a  year  at  a  grammar-school,  and  a  year  at 
a  commercial  school;  and  then  he  was  taken  into  the 
family  business,  and  set  to  serve  at  the  counter  and  run 
on  errands.  He  disliked  the  life ;  and  his  father,  who 
feared  that  he  would  break  loose  and  go  to  sea,  gravely 
took  him  a  round  of  the  shops  in  Boston,  and  showed 
him  joiners,  bricklayers,  turners,  braziers,  and  cutlers  at 
their  work,  in  order  that,  with  knowledge  of  what  he 
was  about,  he  might  choose  his  calling  for  himself. 
The  boy,  who  was  twelve  years  old,  everywhere  learned 
something  which  he  never  forgot,  and  which  he  turned 
to  account  in  one  or  another  of  the  seventy  years  that 
were  before  him.  The  combined  good  sense  of  parent 
and  child  led  them  to  decide  on  the  trade  of  a  printer. 
He  was  bound  apprentice,  and  from  this  time  forward 


74  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

he  read  the  books  which  passed  under  his  hand.  Others, 
which  he  loved  better,  he  purchased  to  keep ;  dining,  a 
joyful  anchorite,  on  a  biscuit  or  a  handful  of  raisins,  in 
order  that  he  might  spend  his  savings  on  his  infant 
library.  He  gave  himself  a  classical  education  out  of 
an  odd  volume  of  the  "  Spectator,"  re-writing  the  papers 
from  memory,  and  correcting  them  by  the  original ;  or 
turning  the  tales  into  verse,  and  back  again  into  prose. 
He  taught  himself  arithmetic  thoroughly,  and  learned 
a  little  geometry  and  a  little  navigation ;  both  of  which 
in  after  days  he  made  to  go  a  long  way,  and  put  to  great 
uses. 

But,  above  all,  he  trained  himself  as  a  logician; 
making  trial  of  many  successive  systems  with  amazing 
zest,  until  he  founded  an  unpretentious  school  of  his 
own  in  which  his  pre-eminence  has  never  been  ques- 
tioned. He  traversed  with  rapidity  all  the  stages  in 
the  art  of  reasoning,  from  the  earliest  phase,  when  a 
man  only  succeeds  in  being  disagreeable  to  his  fellows, 
up  to  the  period  when  he  has  become  a  proficient  in 
the  science  of  persuading  them.  He  began  by  arguing 
to  confute,  "souring  and  spoiling  the  conversation,"  and 
making  enemies,  instead  of  disciples,  at  every  turn.  "  I 
had  caught  this,"  he  wrote,  "by  reading  my  father's 
books  of  dispute  on  religion.  Persons  of  good  sense,  I 
have  since  observed,  seldom  fall  into  it,  except  lawyers, 
university  men,  and  generally  men  of  all  sorts  who 
have  been  bred  at  Edinburgh."  He  next  lighted  upon 
a  copy  of  Xenophon's  "  Memorabilia,"  and,  captivated 
by  the  charms  of  the  Socratic  dialogue,  he  dropped 
the  weapons  of  abrupt  contradiction  and  positive  as- 
sertion, and  put  on  the  humble  inquirer.  He  grew 
very  expert  in  drawing  people  into  concessions,  the 
consequences  of  which  they  did  not  foresee,  —  espe- 
cially people  who  were  not  familiar  with  Shaftesbury's 
"Characteristics"  and  Collins's  "Discourse  on  Free 
Thinking."  From  his  own  study  of  those  works  he  had 
derived  conclusions  which  made  it  safer  for  him  to 
proselytise  the  Boston  of  that  day  by  a  process  of  sug- 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES 


75 


gestion  and  induction  rather  than  by  dogmatic  exposi- 
tion. At  length  he  found  that  his  friends  grew  wary, 
and  would  hardly  reply  to  the  most  common  question 
without  asking  first  what  he  intended  to  infer  from 
the  answer.  Then  he  once  more  changed  his  style  of 
conversation,  and  this  time  for  good.  Keeping  nothing 
of  his  former  method  except  the  habit  of  expressing 
himself  "  with  modest  diffidence,"  he  refrained  altogether 
from  the  words  "certainly,"  and  "undoubtedly,"  and 
from  the  air  of  aggressive  superiority  which  generally 
accompanies  them.  The  phrases  with  which  he  urged 
his  point,  and  seldom  failed  to  carry  it,  were  "  I  con- 
ceive," or  "  I  apprehend,"  or  "  It  appears  to  me,"  or 
"  It  is  so,  if  I  am  not  mistaken."  He  made  it  a  practice, 
likewise,  to  encourage  his  interlocutors  to  think  that 
the  opinion  which  he  aimed  at  instilling  into  them 
was  theirs  already.  If,  as  he  pleased  himself  with 
believing,  he  had  learned  these  arts  from  Socrates, 
the  teaching  of  the  Academy  had  for  once  borne  an 
abundant  crop  of  Baconian  fruit ;  for  it  would  be 
hard  to  name  a  man  who,  over  so  long  a  space  of 
time  as  Franklin,  ever  talked  so  many  people  into 
doing  that  which  was  for  their  own  improvement  and 
advantage. 

The  theatre  of  his  beneficent  operations  was  not  his 
native  city.  Boston,  in  common  with  the  world  at  large, 
gathered  in  due  time  some  of  the  crumbs  which  fell 
from  the  table  of  his  inventiveness ;  but  she  very  soon 
lost  the  first  claim  upon  one  who  was  as  clever  a  son 
as  even  she  ever  produced.  At  the  age  of  seventeen 
Franklin  walked  into  the  capital  of  Pennsylvania,  his 
pockets  stuffed  with  shirts  and  stockings,  but  empty  of 
money ;  carrying  a  roll  under  each  arm,  and  eating 
as  he  went  along.  -The  expansive  possibilities  of  an 
American's  career  may  be  traced  in  every  page  of  his 
early  story.  The  intimate  companions  of  his  poverty, 
young  as  he,  made  their  way  in  the  world  soon  and  far. 
One,  who  went  to  England,  got  himself  into  a  couplet 
of  the  "  Dunciad " ;   wrote  a  History  of  William  the 


J6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Third  which  was  praised  by  Charles  Fox ;  and  extracted 
from  the  Earl  of  Bute  a  pension  twice  as  large  as  Dr. 
Johnson's.  Another  became  an  eminent  lawyer,  and 
died  rich  while  he  and  Franklin  were  still  below  middle 
age.  The  two  friends  had  agreed  that  the  one  who  left 
the  earth  first  should  afterwards  pay  a  visit  to  the  other; 
but  the  ghost  had  yet  to  be  found  which  had  the  cour- 
age to  present  itself  to  Franklin. 

He  worked  hard,  and  lived  very  hardly  indeed  in 
Philadelphia,  and  in  London  for  a  while,  and  in  Phila- 
delphia again.  At  the  end  of  ten  years  he  was  securely 
settled  in  business  as  a  stationer  and  master-printer,  and 
the  owner  of  a  newspaper  which  soon  became  an  ex- 
cellent property,  and  which  bore  the  trace  of  his  hand 
in  every  corner  of  its  columns.1  By  a  miracle  of  indus- 
try and  thrift,  he  had  paid  out  his  first  partners,  and 
paid  off  his  borrowed  capital.  It  was  no  longer  neces- 
sary for  him  to  breakfast  on  gruel,  and  sup  on  half  an 
anchovy  and  a  slice  of  bread ;  to  be  at  work  when  his 
neighbours  returned  at  night  from  the  club,  and  at  work 
again  before  they  rose  in  the  morning ;  to  wheel  the 
paper  for  his  Gazette  home  through  the  streets  on  a 
barrow,  and  to  take  neither  rest  nor  recreation  except 
when  a  book  "debauched"  him  from  his  labours.  From 
the  moment  that  he  had  set  his  foot  firmly  on  the  path 
of  fortune,  he  threw  his  vast  energy,  his  audacious  crea- 
tiveness,  his  dexterity  in  the  management  of  his  fellow- 
creatures,  and  a  good  portion  of  his  increased  though 
still  slender  substance,  into  the  service  of  his  adopted 
city.  One  scheme  followed  hard  upon  another;  each 
of  them  exactly  suited  to  local  wants  which  Franklin 
was  quick  to  discern,  and  to  a  national  taste  with  which 
he  was  entirely  in  sympathy.     By  the  end  of  a  quarter 

1  The  following  advertisement  appears  in  the  Pennsylvanian  Gazette, 
for  June  23rd,  1737:  "Taken  out  of  a  pew  in  the  church,  some  months 
since,  a  Common  Prayer  Book,  bound  in  red,  gilt,  and  lettered  D.  F.  on 
each  cover.  The  person  who  took  it  is  desired  to  open  it  and  read  the 
eighth  Commandment,  and  afterwards  return  it  into  the  same  pew  again; 
upon  which  no  further  notice  will  be  taken."  D.  F.  stands  for  Deborah 
Franklin. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  J  J 

of  a  century  Philadelphia  lacked  nothing  that  was  pos- 
sessed by  any  city  in  England,  except  a  close  corpora- 
tion and  a  bull-ring,  and  enjoyed  in  addition  a  complete 
outfit  of  institutions  which  were  eagerly  imitated  through- 
out the  Northern  colonies. 

Franklin's  first  project  was  a  book-club;  the  mother, 
to  use  his  own  words,  of  those  subscription  libraries 
which  perceptibly  raised  the  standard  of  American 
conversation,  "  and  made  tradesmen  and  farmers  as  in- 
telligent as  the  gentry  of  other  countries."  Then  came, 
in  rapid  succession,  a  volunteer  fire  company ;  a  paid 
police-force;  a  public  hospital;  a  Philosophical  Society; 
an  Academy,  which  he  lived  to  see  develope  itself  into 
the  University  of  Philadelphia ;  and  a  paper  currency 
which,  with  his  stern  views  on  private  and  public  credit, 
he  fortunately  for  him  did  not  live  to  see  at  the  height 
of  its  notoriety  in  the  shape  of  the  memorable  Pennsyl- 
vanian  Bonds.  He  turned  his  attention  successfully  to 
the  paving  and  scavenging  of  the  highways.  When  the 
city  was  first  lighted,  he  designed  the  form  of  street- 
lamp  which  has  long  been  in  universal  use  wherever 
Anglosaxons  now  burn  gas  or  once  burned  oil.  He 
invented  a  hot-stove  for  sitting-rooms,  and  refused  a 
patent  for  it,  on  the  ground  that  he  himself  had  profited 
so  much  by  the  discoveries  of  others  that  he  was  only 
too  glad  of  an  opportunity  to  repay  his  debt,  and  to  re- 
pay it  in  a  shape  so  peculiarly  acceptable  to  his  country- 
women. Whitefield,  whom  everybody  except  the  clergy 
wished  to  hear,  had  been  refused  the  use  of  the  existing 
pulpits.  Franklin,  as  his  contribution  to  the  cause  of 
religion,  promoted  the  building  of  a  spacious  meeting- 
house, vested  in  trustees,  expressly  for  the  use  of  any 
preacher  of  any  denomination  who  might  desire  to  say 
something  to  the  people  of  Philadelphia. 

In  1744,  on  the  breaking  out  of  war  with  France, 
Franklin  excited  the  patriotism  of  Pennsylvania  by 
voice  and  pen,  and  directed  it  into  the  practical  channel 
of  enrolling  a  State  militia,  and  constructing  a  battery 
for  the  protection  of  the  river.     He  raised  the  requisite 


yS  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

funds  by  a  lottery  in  which  he  was  artful  enough  to 
induce  the  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends  to  take 
tickets,  knowing  well  that,  without  their  support,  no 
scheme  appealing  to  the  purse  would  be  very  produc- 
tive in  Philadelphia.  In  order  to  arm  his  embrasures, 
he  applied  to  Governor  Clinton  of  New  York  for  can- 
non, who  met  him  with  a  flat  refusal.  But  Franklin 
sate  with  him  over  his  Madeira  until,  as  the  bumpers 
went  round,  his  Excellency  consented  to  give  six  guns, 
then  rose  to  ten,  and  ended  by  contributing  to  the  de- 
fence of  the  Delaware  no  less  than  eighteen  fine  pieces, 
with  carriages  included.  Eleven  years  afterwards,  when 
Braddock  marched  to  the  attack  of  Fort  Duquesne, 
Franklin,  by  the  earnest  request  of  the  general,  and  at 
formidable  risk  to  his  own  private  fortune,  organised 
the  transport  and  commissariat  with  an  ability  and  a 
foresight  in  marked  contrast  to  the  military  conduct  of 
the  ill-fated  expedition.  In  the  terrible  panic  which 
ensued  when  the  news  of  the  disaster  reached  Phila- 
delphia, the  authorities  of  the  colony,  —  catching  at  the 
hope  that,  as  he  understood  everything  else,  there  was 
at  least  a  chance  of  his  understanding  how  to  fight,  —  - 
entrusted  him  with  the  defence  of  the  North-West 
frontier  against  the  imminent  peril  of  an  Indian  inva- 
sion. He  levied  and  commanded  a  respectable  force, 
and  threw  up  a  line  of  forts,  the  planning  and  building 
of  which  gave  him  the  most  exquisite  satisfaction ;  and, 
on  his  return  home,  he  accepted  the  highest  title  of  a 
true  American  by  becoming  a  Colonel  of  Militia,  and 
was  greeted  by  his  regiment  with  a  salvo  of  artillery 
which  broke  several  glasses  of  the  electrical  apparatus 
that  had  already  made  his  name  famous  throughout  the 
entire  scientific  world. 

There  were  few  military  posts  with  regard  to  which 
Franklin,  if  he  was  not  competent  to  fill  them  himself, 
could  not  give  a  useful  hint  to  their  holder.  The  chap- 
lain of  his  troops  complained  that  the  men  would  not 
attend  public  worship.  The  commanding  officer  ac- 
cordingly suggested  that  the  chaplain  should  himself 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  fg 

serve  out  the  rum  when  prayers  were  over;  "and 
never,"  said  Franklin,  "were  prayers  more  generally 
and  punctually  attended.  I  think  this  method  prefer- 
able to  the  punishment  inflicted  by  some  military  laws 
for  non-attendance  on  divine  service."  Wherever  he 
went,  and  whatever  he  was  engaged  upon,  he  was 
always  calculating,  and  never  guessing.  When  he  built 
his  forts,  he  soon  noticed  that  two  men  cut  down  a  pine 
of  fourteen  inches  in  diameter  in  six  minutes,  and  that 
each  pine  made  three  palisades  eighteen  feet  in  length. 
When  he  was  collecting  money  for  his  battery,  he  satis- 
fied himself,  by  means  of  an  intricate  computation,  that 
out  of  every  twenty-two  Quakers  only  one  sincerely  dis- 
approved of  participation  in  a  war  of  defence.  And  on 
an  evening  when  Whitefield  was  delivering  a  sermon 
from  the  top  of  the  Court-House  steps,  Franklin  moved 
about  in  the  crowd,  and  measured  distances,  until  he  had 
ascertained  that  the  human  voice,  or  at  any  rate  White- 
field's  voice,  could  be  heard  by  more  than  thirty  thou- 
sand people.  "  This,"  he  said,  "  reconciled  me  to  the 
newspaper  accounts  of  his  having  preached  to  twenty- 
five  thousand  people  in  the  fields,  and  to  the  history  of 
generals  haranguing  whole  armies,  of  which  I  had 
sometimes  doubted." 

His  growing  reputation  brought  him  important  public 
employment,  though  not  any  great  amount  of  direct 
public  remuneration.  He  was  chosen  Clerk  of  the 
Pennsylvanian  Assembly  in  1736,  and  next  year  he  was 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  Pennsylvanian  Post  Office. 
As  time  went  on,  the  British  Government,  finding  that 
the  postal  revenue  of  the  colonies  had  fallen  to  less  than 
nothing,  appointed  Franklin  Joint  Postmaster-General 
of  America,  with  a  colleague  to  help  him.  The  pair 
were  to  have  six  hundred  pounds  a  year  between  them, 
if  they  could  make  that  sum  out  of  the  profits  of  the 
office.  For  four  years  the  balance  was  against  them; 
but  at  the  end  of  that  time  the  department,  managed 
according  to  the  precepts  of  "  The  Way  to  Wealth  "  in 
Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  began  to  pay,  and  paid  ever 


80  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

better  yearly,  until  it  yielded  the  Crown  a  net  receipt 
three  times  as  large  as  that  of  the  Post  Office  in  Ireland. 
So  much  he  did  for  himself,  and  so  much  more  he  was 
enabled  to  do  for  others,  by  a  strict  obedience  to  the 
promptings  of  a  mother-wit  which,  in  great  things  as  in 
small,  was  all  but  infallible,  and  by  a   knowledge   of 
human  nature  diplomatic  even  to  the  verge  of  wiliness. 
When  he  had  a  project  on  foot,  he  would  put  his  vanity 
in  the  back-ground,  and  would  represent  the  matter  as 
the  plan  of  a  number  of  friends,  who  had  requested  him 
to  go  about  and  recommend  it  to  public  favour  and  sup- 
port.    To  conciliate  an  enemy,  if  all  other  means  failed, 
he  would  beg  of  him  a  trifling  service,  which  in  decency 
could  not  be  refused;  relying  on  the  maxim  that  "  He 
who  has  once  done  you  a  kindness  will  be  more  ready 
to  do  you  another  than  he  whom  you   have  yourself 
obliged."     For  the  furtherance  of  all  his  undertakings, 
he  had  a  powerful  instrument  in  a  newspaper  as  respect- 
able as  it  was  readable;  which,  with  a  fine  prescience 
of  the  possible  dangers  of  a  free  press  to  America,  and 
not  to  America  alone,  he  steadily  refused  to  make  the 
vehicle  of   scurrilous    gossip    and   personal   detraction. 
By  such  arts  as  these   he   fulfilled   to   the   letter   the 
augury  of  his  good  old  father,  who  in  past  days  loved 
to  remind  him  that  a  man  diligent  in  his  calling  should 
stand  before  Kings,  and  not  before  mean  men.     "  I  did 
not  think,"  said  Franklin,  "  that  I  should  ever  literally 
stand  before  Kings,  which,  however,  has  since  happened; 
for  I  have  stood  before  five,  and  even  had  the  honour  of 
sitting  down  with  one,  the  King  of  Denmark,  to  dinner." 
Franklin  had  the  habit,  which  was  the  basis  of  his 
originality,  of  practising  himself  what  he  preached  to 
others.     He  kept  his  accounts  in  morals  as  minutely  as 
in  business  matters.     He  drew  up  a  catalogue  of  twelve 
virtues  which  it  was  essential  to  cultivate,  commencing 
with  Temperance  and  ending  with  Chastity;  to  which 
at  a  subsequent  period  a  Quaker  friend,  who  knew  him 
well,  advised  him  to  add  Humility.    "  My  intention,"  he 
wrote,  "  being  to  acquire  the  habitude  of  those  virtues, 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  8 1 

I  judged  it  would  be  well  not  to  distract  my  attention 
by  attempting  the  whole  at  once,  but  to  fix  it  on  one  of 
them  at  a  time ;  and,  when  I  should  be  master  of  that, 
then  to  proceed  to  another,  till  I  should  have  gone 
through  the  thirteen.  And,  as  the  previous  acquisition 
of  some  might  facilitate  the  acquisition  of  certain  others, 
I  arranged  them  with  that  view."  By  the  time  he 
became  Joint  Postmaster-General  of  America,  he  had 
made  his  ground  sure  enough  to  justify  him  in  relaxing 
his  vigilance,  though  he  carried  his  little  book  on  all 
his  voyages  as  a  precaution  and  a  reminder.  The  Joint 
Postmaster-General  of  England,  who  was  no  other  than 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  would  not  have  got  very  far  along 
the  list  of  virtues,  at  whichever  end  he  had  begun. 

The  leaders  of  thought  in  America,  and  those  who  in 
coming  days  were  the  leaders  of  war,  had  all  been  bred 
in  one  class  or  another  of  the  same  severe  school. 
Samuel  Adams,  who  started  and  guided  New  England 
in  its  resistance  to  the  Stamp  Act,  was  a  Calvinist  by 
conviction.  The  austere  purity  of  his  household  recalled 
an  English  home  in  the  Eastern  Counties  during  the 
early  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  .  He  held  the 
political  creed  of  the  fathers  of  the  colony;  and  it  was  a 
faith  as  real  and  sacred  to  him  as  it  had  been  to  them. 
His  fortune  was  small.  Even  in  that  city  of  plain  liv- 
ing, men  blamed  him  because  he  did  not  take  sufficient 
thought  for  the  morrow.  But  he  had  a  pride  which  knew 
no  shame  in  poverty,  and  an  integrity  far  superior  to  its 
temptations.  Alexander  Hamilton,  serving  well  and 
faithfully,  but  sorely  against  the  grain,  as  a  clerk  in  a 
merchant's  office,  had  earned  and  saved  the  means  of 
putting  himself,  late  in  the  day,  to  college.  Jefferson, 
who  inherited  wealth,  used  it  to  obtain  the  highest  edu- 
cation which  his  day  and  his  country  could  provide; 
entered  a  profession ;  and  worked  at  it  after  such  a 
fashion  that  by  thirty  he  was  the  leading  lawyer  of  his 
colony,  and  that  no  less  a  colony  than  Virginia.  The 
future  warriors  of  the    Revolution  had  a  still  harder 


fe*1oo 


82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

apprenticeship.  Israel  Putnam  had  fought  the  Indians 
and  the  French  for  a  score  of  years,  and  in  a  score  of 
battles ;  leading  his  men  in  the  dress  of  a  woodman, 
with  firelock  on  shoulder  and  hatchet  at  side ;  a  powder 
horn  under  his  right  arm,  and  a  bag  of  bullets  at  his 
waist ;  and,  (as  the  distinctive  equipment  of  an  officer,) 
a  pocket  compass  to  guide  their  marches  through  the 
forest.  He  had  known  what  it  was  to  have  his  comrades 
scalped  before  his  eyes,  and  to  stand  gashed  in  the  face 
with  a  tomahawk,  and  bound  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  with 
a  torture-fire  crackling  about  him.  From  adventures 
which,  in  the  back  settlements,  were  regarded  merely  as 
the  harder  side  of  a  farmer's  work,  he  would  go  home  to 
build  fences  with  no  consciousness  of  heroism,  and  still 
less  with  any  anticipation  of  the  world-famous  scenes  for 
his  part  in  which  these  experiences  of  the  wilderness 
were  training  him.  Nathaniel  Greene,  the  ablest  of 
Washington's  lieutenants,  —  of  those  at  any  rate  who 
remained  true  to  their  cause  from  first  to  last,  —  was 
one  of  eight  sons,  born  in  a  house  of  a  single  story. 
His  father  combined  certain  humble  trades  with  the 
care  of  a  small  farm,  and,  none  the  less  or  the  worse  on 
account  of  his  week-day  avocations,  was  a  preacher  of 
the  gospel.  "The  son,"  Mr.  Bancroft  tells  us,  "excelled 
in  diligence  and  manly  sports.  None  of  his  age  could 
wrestle,  or  skate,  or  run  better  than  he,  or  stand  before 
him  as  a  neat  ploughman  and  skilful  mechanic."  Under 
such  literary  and  scientific  guidance  as  he  could  find 
among  his  neighbours,  he  learned  geometry,  and  its 
application  to  the  practical  work  of  a  new  country.  He 
read  poetry  and  philosophy,  as  they  are  read  by  a  man 
of  many  and  great  thoughts,  whose  books  are  few  but 
good.  Above  all,  he  made  a  special  study  of  Plutarch 
and  of  Caesar,  —  authors  who,  whether  in  a  translation, 
or  in  the  original  Greek  and  Latin,  never  give  out  their 
innermost  meaning  except  to  brave  hearts  on  the  eve  of 
grave  events.1 

1  Those  who  read  or  write  about  the  American  Revolution  must  feel  it 
almost  an  impertinence  to  define  their  obligations  to  Mr.  Bancroft,  and  to 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  83 

Meantime  the  military  chief  upon  whom  the  main 
weight  of  responsibility  was  to  rest  had  been  disciplined 
for  his  career  betimes.  At  an  age  when  a  youth  of  his 
rank  in  England  would  have  been  shirking  a  lecture  in 
order  to  visit  Newmarket,  or  settling  the  colour  of  his 
first  lace  coat,  Washington  was  surveying  the  valleys  of 
the  Alleghany  Mountains.  He  slept  in  all  weathers 
under  the  open  sky ;  he  swam  his  horses  across  rivers 
swollen  with  melted  snow ;  and  he  learned,  as  sooner  or 
later  a  soldier  must,  to  guess  what  was  on  the  other  side 
of  the  hill,  and  to  judge  how  far  the  hill  itself  was  dis- 
tant. At  nineteen  he  was  in  charge  of  a  district  on  the 
frontier;  and  at  twenty-two  he  fought  his  first  battle, 
with  forty  men  against  five  and  thirty,  and  won  a  victory, 
on  its  own  small  scale,  as  complete  as  that  of  Quebec. 
The  leader  of  the  French  was  killed,  and  all  his  party 
shot  down  or  taken.  It  was  an  affair  which,  coming  at 
one  of  the  rare  intervals  when  the  world  was  at  peace, 
made  a  noise  as  far  off  as  Europe,  and  gained  for  the 
young  officer  in  London  circles  a  tribute  of  hearty  praise, 
with  its  due  accompaniment  of  envy  and  misrepresenta- 
tion. Horace  Walpole  gravely  records  in  his  Memoirs 
of  George  the  Second  that  Major  Washington  had  con- 
cluded the  letter  announcing  his  success  with  the  words  : 
"  I  heard  the  bullets  whistle,  and,  believe  me,  there  is 
something  charming  in  the  sound."  Of  course  there  was 
nothing  of  the  sort  in  the  despatch,  which  in  its  business- 
like simplicity  might  have  been  written  by  Wellington 
at  six  and  forty.  Many  years  afterwards  a  clergyman, 
braver  even  than  Washington,  asked  him  if  the  story  was 
true.  "  If  I  said  so,"  replied  the  General,  "it  was  when 
I  was  young." 

But  his  was  a  fame  which  struck  its  roots  deepest  in 
discouragement,  and  even  in  defeat ;  and  that  unwelcome 
feature  in  his  destiny  he  soon  had  cause  to  recognise. 

specify  the  items  of  the  debt  which  they  owe  him.  His  History  of  the 
United  States  of  America  supplies  a  vast  mass  of  detail,  illuminated  by  a 
fine  spirit  of  liberty,  which  is  inspired  indeed  by  patriotism,  but  is  not 
bounded  in  its  scope  by  any  limitations  of  country  or  of  century. 


84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  came  from  the  ambuscade  in  front  of  Fort  Duquesne 
with  thirty  men  alive  out  of  his  three  companies  of  Vir- 
ginians ;  with  four  shot-holes  in  his  coat ;  and  a  name 
for  coolness  and  conduct  which  made  him  the  talk  of  the 
whole  empire,  and  the  pride  of  the  colony  that  bore  him. 
During  the  three  coming  years,  as  Commander  in  Chief 
of  her  forces,  he  did  his  utmost  to  keep  her  borders  safe 
and  her  honour  high.  For  himself  it  was  a  season  of 
trial,  sore  to  bear,  but  rich  in  lessons.  The  Governor  of 
Virginia  grudged  him  rank  and  pay,  and  stinted  him  in 
men  and  means  ;  lost  no  opportunity  of  reminding  him 
that  he  was  a  provincial  and  not  a  royal  officer ;  and 
made  himself  the  centre  of  military  intrigues  which  gave 
Washington  a  foretaste  of  what  he  was  to  endure  at  the 
hands  of  Charles  Lee,  and  Gates,  and  Benedict  Arnold 
in  the  darkest  hours  of  his  country's  history.  But  a 
time  came  when  William  Pitt,  who  understood  America, 
was  in  a  position  to  insist  on  fair  play  and  equal  treat- 
ment to  the  colonists  who  were  supporting  so  large  a 
share  in  the  burdens  and  dangers  of  the  war.  Under 
his  auspices  Washington  directed  the  advanced  party  of 
an  expedition  which  placed  the  British  flag  on  Fort 
Duquesne,  and  performed  the  last  offices  to  the  mortal 
remains  of  those  British  soldiers  who  had  perished  in  the 
woods  which  covered  the  approaches  to  the  fatal  strong- 
hold. After  this  success,  which  made  his  native  province 
as  secure  from  invasion  as  Somersetshire,  the  young  man 
retired  into  private  life,  with  no  recompense  for  his  ser- 
vices except  the  confidence  and  gratitude  of  his  fellow- 
citizens.  He  had  received  a  practical  education  in  the 
science  of  generalship  such  as  few  exceptborn  princes  have 
ever  acquired  by  six  and  twenty,  combined  with  a  mental 
and  moral  drilling  more  indispensable  still  to  one  whose 
military  difficulties,  however  exceptionally  arduous,  were 
the  smallest  part  of  the  ordeal  laid  up  for  him  in  the  future. 

Such  were  the  men  who  had  been  reluctantly  drawn 
by  their  own  sense  of  duty,  and  by  the  urgent  appeals  of 
friends  and  neighbours,  into  the  front  rank  of  a  conflict 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  85 

which  was  none  of  their  planning.  Some  of  them  were 
bred  in  poverty,  and  all  of  them  lived  in  tranquil  and 
modest  homes.  They  made  small  gains  by  their  private 
occupations,  and  did  much  public  service  for  very  little 
or  for  nothing,  and  in  many  cases  out  of  their  own 
charges.  They  knew  of  pensions  and  sinecures  only  by 
distant  hearsay ;  and  ribands  or  titles  were  so  much  out- 
side their  scope  that  they  had  not  even  to  ask  themselves 
what  those  distinctions  were  worth.  Their  antecedents 
and  their  type  of  character  were  very  different  from  those 
of  any  leading  Minister  in  the  British  Cabinet ;  and  they 
were  likely  to  prove  dangerous  customers  when  the  one 
class  of  men  and  of  ideas  was  brought  into  collision  with 
the  other.  While  Washington  and  the  Adamses  led  labo- 
rious days,  the  English  statesmen  who  moulded  the  des- 
tinies of  America  into  such  an  unlooked-for  shape  were 
coming  to  the  front  by  very  different  methods.  They 
had  for  the  most  part  trod  an  easier  though  a  more  tortu- 
ous path  to  place  and  power  ;  or  rather  to  the  power  of 
doing  as  their  monarch  bade  them.  George  the  Third's 
system  of  personal  government  had  long  become  an  estab- 
lished fact,  and  the  career  of  an  aspirant  to  office  under 
that  system  was  now  quite  an  old  story.  "  A  young  man 
is  inflamed  with  the  love  of  his  country.  Liberty  charms 
him.  He  speaks,  writes,  and  drinks  for  her.  He 
searches  records,  draws  remonstrances,  fears  Preroga- 
tive. A  secretary  of  the  Treasury  waits  on  him  in  the 
evening.  He  appears  next  morning  at  a  minister's 
levee.  He  goes  to  Court,  is  captivated  by  the  King's 
affability,  moves  an  address,  drops  a  censure  on  the  lib- 
erty of  the  press,  kisses  hands  for  a  place,  bespeaks  a 
Birthday  coat,  votes  against  Magna  Charta,  builds  a 
house  in  town,  lays  his  farms  into  pleasure-grounds  under 
the  inspection  of  Mr.  Brown,  pays  nobody,  games,  is 
undone,  asks  a  reversion  for  three  lives,  is  refused,  finds 
the  constitution  in  danger,  and  becomes  a  patriot  once 
more."  x    That  passage  would  be  no  libel  if  applied  to 

1  The  Spectator.     Number  None,  written  by  Nobody.     Sunday,  January 
19th,  1772. 


86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

all  except  a  few  members  of  the  Government ;  —  a  Gov- 
ernment which  was  controlled  by  the  Bedfords,  and  ad- 
vised on  legal  questions  by  Wedderburn,  whose  creed 
was  self-interest ;  and  which  was  soon  to  be  advised  on 
military  questions  by  Lord  George  Germaine,  who  had 
forfeited  his  reputation  by  refusing  to  bring  forward  the 
cavalry  at  Minden.  It  was  a  cruel  fate  for  a  country 
possessing  statesmen  like  Chatham  and  Burke,  a  jurist 
like  Camden,  and  soldiers  with  the  unstained  honour  and 
solid  professional  attainments  of  Conway  and  Barre. 
With  such  talents  lying  unemployed,  and  such  voices 
crying  unheeded,  the  nation  was  precipitated  into  a 
gratuitous  and  deplorable  policy  by  men  who  did  not  so 
much  as  believe  in  the  expediency  of  the  course  which 
they  were  pursuing.  -  To  the  worse,  and  unfortunately 
the  abler,  section  of  the  Ministry,  the  right  and  wrong 
of  the  question  mattered  not  one  of  the  straws  in  which 
their  champagne  bottles  were  packed;  while  the  better 
of  them,  knowing  perfectly  well  that  the  undertaking  on 
which  they  had  embarked  was  a  crime  and  a  folly,  with  sad 
hearts  and  sore  consciences  went  into  the  business,  and 
some  of  them  through  the  business,  because  the  King 
wished  it. 

And  yet,  of  all  the  political  forces  then  in  existence, 
the  King's  influence  was  the  very  last  which  ought 
to  have  been  exerted  against  the  cause  of  concord.  He 
might  well  have  been  touched  by  the  persistence  with 
which  his  American  subjects  continued  to  regard  him 
as  standing  towards  them  in  that  relation  which  a  sov- 
ereign "  born  and  bred  a  Briton  "  should  of  all  others 
prefer.  A  law-respecting  people,  who  did  not  care  to 
encroach  on  the  privileges  of  others,  and  liked  still  less 
to  have  their  own  rights  invaded,  they  were  slow  to 
detect  the  tricks  which  of  recent  years  had  been  played 
with  the  essential  doctrines  of  the  English  Constitution. 
When  the  home  Government  ill  used  them,  they  blamed 
the  Ministry,  and  pleased  themselves  by  believing  that 
the  King,  if  he  ever  could  contemplate  the  notion  of 
stretching  his  prerogative,  would  be  tempted  to  do  so 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  %j 

for  the  purpose  of  protecting  them.  George  the  Third 
was  the  object  of  hope  and  warm  devotion  in  America 
at  the  moment  when,  in  the  City  of  London,  and  among 
the  freeholders  of  the  English  counties,  he  was  in  the 
depths  of  his  unpopularity.  In  the  April  of  1768  the 
King,  if  he  had  listened  to  any  adviser  except  his  own 
stout  heart,  would  not  have  ventured  to  show  himself 
outside  his  palace.  His  Lord  Steward  was  exchanging 
blows  with  the  angry  Liverymen  at  the  doors  of  the 
Presence  Chamber,  and  the  Grand  Jury  of  Middlesex 
was  refusing  to  return  the  rioters  for  trial.  Junius 
could  not  attack  the  Crown  too  ferociously,  or  flatter 
Wilkes  too  grossly,  to  please  the  public  taste.  But  in 
that  very  month  Franklin,  writing  to  a  Pennsylvanian 
correspondent  a  sentiment  with  which  almost  every 
Pennsylvanian  would  have  concurred,  expressed  his 
conviction  that  some  punishment  must  be  preparing 
for  a  people  who  were  ungratefully  abusing  the  best 
constitution,  and  the  best  monarch,  any  nation  was  ever 
blessed  with.  A  year  afterwards,  in  the  letter  which 
conveyed  to  his  employers  in  America  the  unwelcome 
intelligence  that  the  Hous^  of  Commons  had  refused 
to  repeal  Townshend's  custom-duties,  Franklin  carefully 
discriminated  between  the  known  ill-will  entertained 
by  Parliament  towards  the  colonies,  and  the  presumed 
personal  inclinations  of  the  King.  "  I  hope  nothing 
that  has  happened,  or  may  happen,  will  diminish  in  the 
least  our  loyalty  to  our  sovereign  or  affection  for  this 
nation  in  general.  I  can  scarcely  conceive  a  King  of 
better  dispositions,  or  more  exemplary  virtues,  or  more 
truly  desirous  of  promoting  the  welfare  of  all  his 
subjects.  The  body  of  this  people,  too,  is  of  a  noble 
and  generous  nature,  loving  and  honouring  the  spirit  of 
liberty,  and  hating  arbitrary  power  of  all  sorts.  We 
have  many,  very  many,  friends  among  them."  Six 
years  afterwards,  when  the  first  blood  had  been  shed,  — 
when  George  the  Third  was  writing  to  his  Minister  to 
express  his  delight  at  the  cruel  laws  that  were  passed 
against   the   colonists,    and   his    discontent   with  every 


88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

English  public  man  who  still  regarded  his  brethren 
across  the  water  with  friendly,  or  even  tolerant,  feelings, 
—  this  letter,  with  others  from  the  same  hand,  was 
seized  by  a  British  officer  in  Boston,  and  sent  to  London 
to  be  submitted  to  his  Majesty's  inspection.  With  what 
sensations  must  he  then  have  read  the  evidence  of  a  love 
and  a  loyalty  which  by  that  time  were  dead  for  ever! 

Franklin,  in  the  passage  which  has  been  quoted,  did 
well  to  give  the  British  people  their  share  in  the  good- 
will which  America  felt  towards  the  British  sovereign. 
The  colonists  were  favourably  disposed  to  George  the 
Third  not  only  for  himself,  or  for  his  supposed  self,  but 
because  he  was  the  great  representative  of  the  mother- 
country,  —  the  figurehead  of  the  stately  ship  which  so 
long  had  carried  the  undivided  fortunes  of  their  race. 
They  loved  the  King  because  they  dearly  loved  the 
name,  the  associations,  the  literature,  the  religious  faith, 
the  habits,  the  sports,  the  art,  the  architecture,  the 
scenery,  the  very  soil,  of  his  kingdom.  That  love  was 
acknowledged  in  pathetic  language  by  men  who  had 
drawn  their  swords  against  us  because,  willing  to  owe 
everything  else  to  England,  they  did  not  recognise  her 
claim  to  measure  them  out  their  portion  of  liberty. 
The  feeling  entertained  towards  her  by  some  of  the  best 
of  those  who  were  forced  by  events  to  enroll  themselves 
among  her  adversaries  is  well  exemplified  by  the  career 
and  the  writings  of  Alexander  Garden.  Born  in  South 
Carolina,  he  had  been  sent  to  Europe  for  his  education. 
When  he  came  to  man's  estate,  he  defied  a  loyalist  father 
in  order  to  fight  for  the  Revolution  under  Nathaniel 
Greene  and  Henry  Lee.  In  his  later  years  he  collected 
an  enormous  multitude  of  personal  anecdotes  relating 
to  the  great  struggle,  told  with  transparent  fidelity,  but 
infused  with  no  common  dose  of  that  bombastic  element 
which  in  our  generation  has  died  out  from  American 
literature,  but  not  before  it  has  made  for  itself  an  imper- 
ishable name.  "  One  truth,"  (so  Garden  wrote  in  his 
better  and  less  ornate  style,)  "  comes  home  to  the  recol- 
lection of  every  man  who  lived  in  those  days.     The  at- 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  89 

tachment  to  England  was  such  that  to  whatever  the 
colonists  wished  to  affix  the  stamp  of  excellence  the 
title  of  '  English  '  was  always  given.  To  reside  in  Eng- 
land was  the  object  of  universal  desire,  the  cherished 
hope  of  every  bosom.  It  was  considered  as  the  delight- 
ful haven,  where  peace  and  happiness  were  alone  to  be 
looked  for.  A  parent  sending  his  sons  to  Eton  or 
Westminster  would  say :  '  I  am  sending  my  sons  home 
for  their  education.'  If  he  himself  should  cross  the 
Atlantic,  though  but  for  a  summer  season,  to  witness 
their  progress,  he  would  say,  '  I  am  going  home  to  visit 
my  children.' " 

The  esteem  and  veneration  of  America  had  been  con- 
centrated all  the  more  upon  the  throne  itself,  because 
there  were  very  few  British  statesmen  whose  names 
were  household  words  in  the  colonies.  The  difficulties 
of  locomotion  were  still  so  great  that  not  one  rural  con- 
stituent out  of  a  hundred  in  England  had  ever  heard  his 
member  speak  in  Parliament.  It  was  hard  enough  for 
a  Yorkshireman  or  a  Cornishman  to  feel  much  enthusi- 
asm for  orators  reported  after  the  meagre  and  whimsical 
fashion  then  in  vogue,  by  which  editors  hoped  to  baffle 
or  conciliate  the  Government  censors.  But  his  ignorance 
was  enlightenment  compared  with  the  bewilderment  of  a 
New  Englander  who  read  in  the  "  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine "  of  four  months  back  how  the  Nardac  Poltrand 
had  moved  an  address  in  the  House  of  Hurgoes, 
complaining  of  the  injuries  sustained  by  Lilliputian 
subjects  trading  in  Columbia;  and  how  the  Hurgo 
Ghewor,  (in  an  harangue  continued  from  the  last  num- 
ber of  the  Magazine,)  had  replied  that  ungrounded 
jealousy  of  Blefuscu  had  already  cost  the  Treasury  of 
Lilliput  no  less  than  five  hundred  thousand  sprugs. 
About  any  individual  Right  Honourable  gentleman  or 
Lord  Temporal  the  colonists  knew  little,  and  cared  less ; 
and  their  only  concern  with  Lords  Spiritual  was  to  insist, 
obstinately  and  most  successfully,  that  they  should  keep 
themselves  on  their  own  side  of  the  Atlantic.  But  at 
last  a  man  arose  whose  deeds  spoke  for  him,  and  the 


90  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

fragments  of  whose  eloquence  were  passed  far  and  wide 
from  mouth  to  ear,  and  did  not  lose  the  stamp  of  their 
quality  in  the  carrying.  With  his  broad  heart,  his  swift 
perception,  and  his  capacious  intellect,  Chatham  knew 
America,  and  he  loved  her  ;  and  he  was  known  and  loved 
by  her  in  return.  He  had  done  more  for  her  than  any 
ruler  had  done  for  any  country  since  William  the  Silent 
saved  and  made  Holland;  and  she  repaid  him  with  a 
true  loyalty.  When  the  evil  day  came,  it  was  to  Chatham 
that  she  looked  for  the  good  offices  which  might  avert 
an  appeal  to  arms.  When  hostilities  had  broken  out, 
she  fixed  on  him  her  hopes  of  an  honourable  peace. 
And  when  he  died,  —  in  the  very  act  of  confessing  her 
wrongs,  though  of  repudiating  and  condemning  the 
establishment  of  that  national  independence  on  which 
her  own  mind  was  by  that  time  irrevocably  set,  —  she 
refused  to  allow  that  she  had  anything  to  forgive  him, 
and  mourned  him  as  a  father  of  her  people. 

His  name  recalled  proud  memories,  in  whatever  part 
of  the  colonies  it  was  spoken.  Throughout  a  splendid 
and  fruitful  war  Americans,  under  his  guidance,  had 
fought  side  by  side  with  Englishmen  as  compatriots 
rather  than  as  auxiliaries.  They  had  given  him  cheer- 
fully, in  men,  in  money,  and  in  supplies,  whatever  he 
had  asked  to  aid  the  national  cause  and  secure  the 
common  safety.  On  one  single  expedition  nine  thou- 
sand provincials  had  marched  from  the  Northern  dis- 
tricts alone.  The  little  colony  of  Connecticut  had  five 
thousand  of  her  citizens  under  arms.  Massachusetts 
raised  seven  thousand  militia-men,  and  taxed  herself 
at  the  rate  of  thirteen  shillings  and  fourpence  in  the 
pound  of  personal  income.  New  Jersey  expended  dur- 
ing every  year  of  the  war  at  the  rate  of  a  pound  a  head 
for  each  of  her  inhabitants.  That  was  how  the  French 
were  cleared  from  the  great  Lakes,  and  from  the  valley 
and  the  tributaries  of  the  Ohio.  That  was  how  Ticon- 
deroga  and  Crownpoint  fell,  and  the  way  was  opened  for 
the  siege  of  Quebec  and  the  conquest  of  the  French 
Dominion.     What  they  had  done  before,  the  colonists 


BRITAIN  AND   HER    COLONIES  9 1 

were  willing  and  ready  to  do  again,  if  they  were  allowed 
to  do  it  in  their  own  fashion.  In  every  successive  war 
with  a  foreign  enemy  England  would  have  found  Amer- 
ica's power  to  assist  the  mother-country  doubled,  and 
her  will  as  keen  as  ever.  The  colonies  which,  for  three 
livelong  years  between  the  spring  of  1775  and  the  spring 
of  1778,  held  their  own  against  the  unbroken  and  un- 
diverted strength  of  Britain,  would  have  made  short 
work  of  any  army  of  invasion  that  the  Court  of  Ver- 
sailles, with  its  hands  full  in  Europe,  could  have  detached 
to  recover  Canada  or  to  subdue  New  England.  Armed 
vessels  in  great  number  would  have  been  fitted  out  by  a 
patriotism  which  never  has  been  averse  to  that  enticing 
form  of  speculation,  and  would  have  been  manned  by 
swarms  of  handy  and  hardy  seamen,  who  in  war-time 
found  privateering  safer  work  than  the  fisheries,  and 
vastly  more  exciting.  The  seas  would  have  been  made 
so  hot  by  the  colonial  corsairs  that  no  French  or  Spanish 
trader  would  have  shown  her  nose  outside  the  ports  of 
St.  Domingo  or  Cuba  except  under  an  escort  numerous 
enough  to  invite  the  grim  attentions  of  a  British  squad- 
ron. But  it  was  a  very  different  matter  that  America 
should  be  called  upon  to  maintain  a  standing  army  of 
royal  troops,  at  a  moment  when  not  a  grain  of  our  powder 
was  being  burned  in  anger  on  the  surface  of  the  globe ; 
and  that  those  troops  should  be  quartered  permanently 
within  her  borders,  and  paid  out  of  American  taxes 
which  the  British  Parliament  had  imposed,  exacted  by 
tax-gatherers  commissioned  by  the  British  Ministry.  It  is 
hard  to  understand  how  any  set  of  statesmen,  who  knew 
the  methods  which  Chatham  had  employed  with  brilliant 
success,  should  have  conceived  the  design  of  using  Ger- 
man mercenaries  and  Indian  savages  to  coerce  English 
colonists  into  defending  the  Empire  in  exact  accordance 
with  the  ideas  which  happened  to  find  favour  in  Down- 
ing Street. 

So  great  was  the  value  of  America  for  fighting  pur- 
poses.    But,  in  peace  and  war  alike,  her  contribution 


92  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  the  wealth,  the  power,  the  true  renown  of  England, 
exceeded  anything  which  hitherto  had  marked  the 
mutual  relations  of  a  parent  State  with  a  colony ;  and 
that  contribution  was  growing  fast.  Already  the  best 
of  customers,  she  took  for  her  share  more  than  a  fourth 
part  of  the  sixteen  million  pounds'  worth  in  annual  value 
at  which  the  British  exports  were  then  computed ;  and 
no  limit  could  be  named  to  the  expansion  of  a  trade 
founded  on  the  wants  of  a  population  which  had  doubled 
itself  within  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  whose  standard 
of  comfort  was  rising  even  more  rapidly  than  its  num- 
bers. But  the  glory  which  was  reflected  on  our  country 
by  her  great  colony  was  not  to  be  measured  by  tons  of 
goods  or  thousands  of  dollars.  All  who  loved  England 
wisely,  dwelt  with  satisfaction  upon  the  prosperity  of 
America.  It  was  to  them  a  proud  thought  that  so 
great  a  mass  of  industry,  such  universally  diffused  com- 
fort, so  much  public  disinterestedness  and  private  virtue, 
should  have  derived  its  origin  from  our  firesides,  and 
have  grown  up  under  our  aegis.  The  Revolutionary 
war,  like  all  civil  wars,  changed  many  things  and 
troubled  many  waters.  It  must  be  accounted  a  mis- 
fortune that  American  society  and  the  American  char- 
acter were  not  allowed  to  develope  themselves  in  a 
natural  and  unbroken  growth  from  the  point  which 
they  had  reached  at  the  close  of  the  first  century  and 
a  half  of  their  history.  At  the  end  of  the  protracted 
conflict  between  the  Stuarts  and  the  party  which  stood 
for  English  liberty,  Englishmen  were  very  different 
from  what  they  had  been  when  it  began.  That  differ- 
ence was  not  in  all  respects  for  the  better,  as  is  shown 
by  a  comparison  between  the  biographies  of  our  public 
men,  andthe  records  of  our  country  houses,  at  the  one 
period,  and  the  other.  And  in  like  manner  the  mutual 
hatred  felt,  and  the  barbarities  inflicted  and  suffered, 
by  partisans  of  either  side  in  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas 
between  1776  and  1782  left  behind  them  in  those  re- 
gions habits  of  lawlessness  and  violence  evil  traces  of 
which  lasted  into  our  lifetime.     As  for  the  Northern 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COIONIES  93 

States,  it  was  a  pity  that  the  wholesome  and  happy 
conditions  of  existence  prevailing  there  before  the 
struggle  for  Independence  were  ever  disturbed ;  for 
no  change  was  likely  to  improve  them.  If  the  King, 
as  a  good  shepherd,  was  thinking  of  his  flock  and  not 
of  himself,  it  is  hard  to  see  what  he  hoped  to  do  for 
their  benefit.  All  they  asked  of  him  was  to  be  let  alone; 
and  with  reason ;  for  they  had  as  just  cause  for  content- 
ment as  the  population  of  any  ideal  State  from  More's 
Utopia  downwards.  And,  indeed,  the  American  colo- 
nists had  the  best  in  the  comparison,  for  there  existed 
among  them  a  manliness,  a  self-reliance,  and  a  spirit  of 
clear-sighted  conformity  to  the  inexorable  laws  of  the 
universe,  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  romances  of 
optimism.  "I  have  lately,"  wrote  Franklin,  "made  a 
tour  through  Ireland  and  Scotland.  In  those  countries 
a  small  part  of  the  society  are  landlords,  great  noble- 
men, and  gentlemen,  extremely  opulent,  living  in  the 
highest  affluence  and  magnificence.  The  bulk  of  the 
people  are  tenants,  extremely  poor,  living  in  the  most 
sordid  wretchedness,  in  dirty  hovels  of  mud  and  straw, 
and  clothed  only  in  rags.  I  thought  often  of  the  hap- 
piness of  New  England,  where  every  man  is  a  free- 
holder, has  a  vote  in  public  affairs,  lives  in  a  tidy  warm 
house,  has  plenty  of  good  food  and  fuel,  with  whole 
clothes  from  head  to  foot,  the  manufacture  perhaps  of 
his  own  family."  1 

It  was  no  wonder  that  they  were  freeholders,  when 
real  property  could  be  bought  for  little  in  the  cultivated 
parts  of  New  England,  and  for  next  to  nothing  in  the 
outlying  districts.  Land  was  no  dearer  as  the  purchaser 
travelled  southwards.  There  is  in  existence  an  amus- 
ing series  of  letters  from  a  certain  Alexander,Mackrabie 
in  America  to  his  brother-in-law  in  England :  and  that 
brother-in-law  knew  a  good  letter  from  a  dull  one,  inas- 
much as  he  was  Philip  Francis.  In  1770  Mackrabie 
wrote  from  Philadelphia  to  ask  what  possessed  Junius 

1  Benjamin  Franklin  to  Joshua  Badcock,  London,  13  January,  1772. 


94  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  address  the  King  in  a  letter  "past  all  endurance," 
and  to  inquire  who  the  devil  Junius  was.  He  sweetened 
the  alarm  which  he  unconsciously  gave  to  his  eminent 
correspondent  by  offering  him  a  thousand  good  acres  in 
Maryland  for  a  hundred  and  thirty  pounds,  and  assur- 
ing him  that  farms  on  the  Ohio  would  be  "  as  cheap  as 
stinking  mackerel."  *  Colonists  whose  capital  consisted 
in  their  four  limbs,  especially  if  they  were  skilled  me- 
chanics, had  no  occasion  to  envy  people  who  could  buy 
land,  or  who  had  inherited  it.  Social  existence  in 
America  was  profoundly  influenced  by  the  very  small 
variation  of  income,  and  still  smaller  of  expenditure,  at 
every  grade  of  the  scale.  The  Governor  of  a  great 
province  could  live  in  style  in  his  city  house  and  his 
country  house,  and  could  keep  his  coach  and  what  his 
guests  called  a  genteel  table,  on  five  hundred  pounds  a 
year,  or  something  like  thirty  shillings  for  each  of  his 
working  days.  A  ship's  carpenter,  in  what  was  for 
America  a  great  city,  received  five  and  sixpence  a  day, 
including  the  value  of  his  pint  of  rum,  the  amount  of 
alcohol  contained  in  which  was  about  an  equivalent  to 
the  Governor's  daily  allowance  of  Madeira.  The  Rector 
of  Philadelphia  Academy,  who  taught  Greek  and  Latin, 
received  two  hundred  pounds  a  year ;  the  Mathematical 
Professor  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  pounds;  and  the 
three  Assistant  Tutors  sixty  pounds  apiece ;  —  all  in 
local  currency,  from  which  about  forty  per  cent,  would 
have  to  be  deducted  in  order  to  express  the  sums  in 
English  money.  In  currency  of  much  the  same  value 
a  house  carpenter  or  a  bricklayer  earned  eight  shillings 
a  day,  which  was  as  much  as  a  Mathematical  Professor, 
and  twice  as  much  as  an  Assistant  Tutor.2 

All  lived  well.  All  had  a  share  in  the  best  that  was 
going ;  and  the  best  was  far  from  bad.     The  hot  buck- 

1  Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis,  vol.  i.,  p.  439. 

2  The  salaries  are  mentioned  in  various  letters  of  Franklin.  The  wages 
he  quotes  from  Adam  Smith,  who,  says  his  biographer,  "  had  been  in  the 
constant  habit  of  hearing  much  about  the  American  colonies  and  their 
affairs,  during  his  thirteen  years  in  Glasgow,  from  the  intelligent  merchants 
and  returned  planters  of  the  city."  —  Rae's  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  p.  266. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  95 

wheat  cakes,  the  peaches,  the  great  apples,  the  turkey 
or  wild-goose  on  the  spit,  and  the  cranberry  sauce  stew- 
ing in  the  skillet,  were  familiar  luxuries  in  every  house- 
hold. Authoritative  testimony  has  been  given  on  this 
point  by  Brillat  Savarin,  in  his  "  Physiologie  de  Gout,"  — 
the  most  brilliant  book  extant  on  that  which,  if  mankind 
were  candid,  would  be  acknowledged  as  the  most  uni- 
versally interesting  of  all  the  arts.  When  he  was  driven 
from  his  country  by  the  French  Revolution,  he  dined 
with  a  Conneticut  yeoman  on  the  produce  of  the  garden, 
the  farmyard,  and  the  orchard.  There  was  "  a  superb 
piece  of  corned  beef,  a  stewed  goose,  and  a  magnificent 
leg  of  mutton,  with  vegetables  of  every  description,  two 
jugs  of  cider,  and  a  tea-service,"  on  the  table  round  which 
the  illustrious  epicure,  the  host,  and  the  host's  four  hand- 
some daughters  were  sitting.  For  twenty  years  and  thirty 
years  past  such  had  been  the  Sunday  and  holiday  fare 
of  a  New  England  freeholder ;  except  that  in  1 774  a 
pretty  patriot  would  as  soon  have  offered  a  guest  a  cup 
of  vitriol  as  a  cup  of  tea.  A  member  of  what  in  Europe 
was  called  the  lower  class  had  in  America  fewer  cares, 
and  often  more  money,  than  those  who,  in  less  favoured 
lands,  would  have  passed  for  his  betters.  His  children 
were  taught  at  the  expense  of  the  township ;  while  a 
neighbour  who  aspired  to  give  his  son  a  higher  educa- 
tion was  liable  to  be  called  on  to  pay  a  yearly  fee  of  no 
less  than  a  couple  of  guineas.  And  the  earner  of 
wages  was  emancipated  from  the  special  form  of  slavery 
which  from  very  early  days  had  established  itself  in  the 
Northern  States,  —  the  tyranny  exercised  over  the  heads 
of  a  domestic  establishment  by  those  whom  they  had 
occasion  to  employ.1 

1  "You  can  have  no  idea,"  Mackrabie  wrote  to  Francis  in  1769,  "of  the 
plague  we  have  with  servants  on  this  side  the  water.  If  you  bring  over  a 
good  one  he  is  spoilt  in  a  month.  Those  from  the  country  are  insolent  and 
extravagant.  The  imported  Dutch  are  to  the  last  degree  ignorant  and 
awkward."  The  rest  of  the  observations  made  by  this  rather  narrow-minded 
Briton  upon  the  other  nationalities  which  supplied  the  household  service 
of  America  had  better  be  read  in  the  original  book,  if  they  are  read  at  all. 
—  Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis,  vol.  i.,  p.  435. 


g6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Equality  of  means,  and  the  total  absence  of  privilege, 
brought  about  their  natural  result  in  the  ease,  the 
simplicity,  the  complete  freedom  from  pretension,  which 
marked  the  intercourse  of  society.  The  great  had  once 
been  as  the  least  of  their  neighbours,  and  the  small 
looked  forward  some  day  to  be  as  the  best  of  them. 
James  Putnam,  the  ablest  lawyer  in  all  America,  loved  to 
walk  in  the  lane  where,  as  a  child  of  seven  years  old,  he 
drove  the  cows  to  pasture.  Franklin,  when  a  poor  boy, 
living  on  eighteen  pence  a  week,  was  sought,  and 
almost  courted,  by  the  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  and 
the  Governor  of  New  York.  Confidence  in  a  future 
which  never  deceived  the  industrious  showed  itself  in 
early  marriages  ;  and  early  marriages  brought  numerous, 
healthy,  and  welcome  children.  There  was  no  search- 
ing of  heart  in  an  American  household  when  a  new 
pair  of  hands  was  born  into  the  world.  The  first 
Adams  who  was  a  colonist  had  eight  sons,  with  what- 
ever daughters  heaven  sent  him ;  his  eldest  son  had  a 
family  of  twelve,  and  his  eldest  son  a  family  of  twelve 
again.  Franklin  had  seen  thirteen  of  his  own  father's 
children  sitting  together  round  the  table,  who  all  grew 
up,  and  who  all  in  their  turn  were  married.  "With 
us,"  he  wrote,  "  marriages  are  in  the  morning  of  life ; 
our  children  are  educated  and  settled  in  the  world  by 
noon ;  and  thus,  our  own  business  being  done,  we  have 
an  afternoon  and  evening  of  cheerful  leisure  to  our- 
selves." 

The  jolly  relative  of  Philip  Francis  took  a  less  cheer- 
ful view  of  the  same  phenomenon.  "The  good  people," 
he  wrote,  "  are  marrying  one  another  as  if  they  had  not 
a  day  to  live.  I  allege  it  to  be  a  plot  that  the  ladies, 
(who  are  all  politicians  in  America),  are  determined 
to  raise  young  rebels  to  fight  against  old  England." 
Throughout  the  colonies  the  unmarried  state  was  held 
in  scanty  honour.  Bachelors,  whether  in  the  cities  or 
villages,  were  poorly  supplied  with  consolations  and 
distractions.  The  social  resources  of  New  York,  even 
for  a  hospitably  treated  stranger,  were  not  inexhaustible. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  97 

"With  regard,"  Mackrabie  complained,  "to  the  people, 
manner,  living,  and  conversation,  one  day  shows  you  as 
much  as  fifty.  Here  are  no  diversions  at  all  at  present. 
I  have  gone  dining  about  from  house  to  house,  but 
meet  with  the  same  dull  round  of  topics  everywhere :  — 
lands,  Madeira  wine,  fishing  parties,  or  politics.  They 
have  a  vile  practice  here  of  playing  back-gammon,  a 
noise  which  I  detest,  which  is  going  forward  in  the 
public  coffee-houses  from  morning  till  night,  frequently 
ten  or  a  dozen  tables  at  a  time.  I  think  a  single  man 
in  America  is  one  of  the  most  wretched  beings  I  can 
conceive."  The  taverns  in  country  districts  were  un- 
comfortable, and,  as  centres  of  relaxation  and  sociable 
discourse,  unlovely.  Adams,  who  had  put  up  at  a  hun- 
dred of  them,  complained  that  a  traveller  often  found 
more  dirt  than  entertainment  and  accommodation  in  a 
house  crowded  with  people  drinking  flip  and  toddy, 
and  plotting  to  get  the  landlord  elected  to  a  local  office 
at  the  next  town's  meeting. 

In  a  new  country  the  graces  and  amenities,  —  and  all 
the  provisions  for  material,  intellectual,  and  what  little 
there  may  be  of  artistic  pleasure,  —  are  within  the 
home,  and  not  outside  it.  Women  in  America  were 
already  treated  with  a  deference  which  was  a  sign  of 
the  part  they  played  in  the  serious  affairs  of  life.  They 
had  not  to  put  up  with  the  conventional  and  over-acted 
homage  which  in  most  European  countries  was  then 
the  substitute  for  their  due  influence  and  their  true 
liberty.  Married  before  twenty,  and  generally  long 
before  twenty,  they  received  in  the  schoolroom  an  edu- 
cation of  the  shortest,  and  something  of  the  flimsiest. 
To  work  cornucopias  and  Birds  of  Paradise  in  coloured 
wools,  to  construct  baskets  of  ornamental  shells,  and  to 
accompany  a  song  on  the  virginals,  the  spinet,  or  the 
harpsichord,  were  the  accomplishments  which  an  Ameri- 
can girl  had  time  to  learn,  and  could  find  instructors  to 
teach  her.  But,  like  the  best  women  in  every  genera- 
tion before  our  own,  their  most  valuable  attainments 
were   those  which,  in  the  intervals  of  domestic  cares, 

H 


98  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

they  taught  themselves  with  a  favourite  author  in  their 
hand,  and  their  feet  on  the  fender.  In  their  literary 
preferences  they  were  behindhand  in  point  of  time ; 
but  it  was  not  to  their  loss.  John  Quincy  Adams,  the 
second  President  of  his  race,  relates  how  lovingly  and 
thoroughly  his  mother  knew  her  Shakespeare  and  her 
Milton,  her  Dryden,  her  Pope,  and  her  Addison ;  and 
how,  when  she  was  in  need  of  a  quotation  tinctured 
with  modern  ideas  of  liberty,  she  had  recourse  to  Young 
and  Thomson.  He  well  remembered  the  evening  when 
the  cannon  had  fallen  silent  on  Bunker's  Hill,  and  Mas- 
sachusetts began  to  count  her  losses.  A  child  of  eight, 
he  heard  Mrs.  Adams  apply  to  Joseph  Warren,  their 
family  friend  and  family  physician,  the  lines,  —  man- 
nered indeed,  and  stilted,  but  not  devoid  of  solemn  and 
sincere  feeling, — which  Collins  addressed  to  the  memory 
of  a  young  officer  who  had  been  killed  at  Fontenoy. 

But  we  need  not  go  to  sons  and  husbands  for  our 
knowledge  of  what  the  matrons  of  the  Revolution  were. 
The  gentlemen  of  France  who  came  to  the  help  of 
America,  were  quick  to  discern  the  qualities  which  dig- 
nified and  distinguished  her  women ;  and  it  is  to  the 
credit  of  the  young  fellows  that  they  eagerly  admired 
an  ideal  of  conduct  which  might  have  been  supposed  to 
be  less  to  the  taste  of  a  soldier  of  passage  than  that 
which  they  had  left  behind  them  at  Paris.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  the  Knight-errants  of  the  war  of  In- 
dependence, each  of  them  the  soul  of  chivalry,  belonged 
to  the  same  nation  as  certain  swashbucklers  of  Napoleon 
who,  after  trailing  their  sabres  over  Europe,  confided  to 
the  chance  reader  of  their  autobiographies  their  per- 
sonal successes,  real  or  pretended,  among  beautiful  and 
unpatriotic  women  in  the  countries  which  they  had  vis- 
ited as  invaders.  After  their  return  home  Lafayette 
and  de  Segur,  courageous  in  the  drawing-room  as  in  the 
field,  openly  proclaimed  and  steadfastly  maintained  that 
in  the  beauty,  elegance,  and  talent  of  its  ladies  Boston 
could  hold  its  own  with  any  capital  city,  that  of  France 
included.       De    Segur,    in    particular,    astonished    and 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  99 

charmed  his  hearers  by  his  description  of  a  community 
where  what  passed  as  gallantry  in  Paris  was  called  by  a 
very  plain  name  indeed ;  where  women  of  station  rode, 
drove,  and  walked  unattended  both  in  town  and  coun- 
try ;  where  girls  of  sixteen  trusted  themselves  to  the 
escort  of  a  guest  who  yesterday  had  been  a  stranger, 
and  talked  to  him  as  frankly  and  as  fast  as  if  he  had 
been  a  cousin  or  a  brother ;  and,  above  all,  where  a 
young  Quakeress  who,  in  her  white  dress  and  close 
muslin  cap,  looked,  (though  he  did  not  tell  her  so,)  like 
a  nymph  rather  than  a  mortal,  lectured  him  on  having 
deserted  his  wife  and  children  to  pursue  the  wicked  call- 
ing of  a  soldier,  and  sternly  rejected  the  plea  that  he 
had  severed  himself  from  all  that  he  held  most  dear  in 
order  to  fight  for  the  liberty  of  her  country.1  After  the 
war  was  over,  he  embodied  his  experience  and  his  ob- 
servations in  a  series  of  predictions  concerning  the 
future  of  the  United  States.  He  clearly  foresaw  that 
the  question  whether  the  South  and  North  were  to  part 
company  would  one  day  arise  in  a  formidable  shape. 
He  foretold  that  wealth  would  bring  luxury,  and  luxury 
corruption.  But  with  regard  to  that  private  morality 
which,  of  all  that  he  found  in  America,  he  approved  the 
most,  he  did  not  venture  on  a  specific  prophecy.  "  I 
shall  be  told,"  he  wrote,  "that  America  will  not  always 
preserve  these  simple  virtues  and  these  pure  manners ; 
but  if  she  preserves  them  only  for  a  century,  that  at  any 
rate  will  be  a  century  gained." 

1  Voltaire,  an  old  friend  of  de  Segur's  mother,  in  half  a  dozen  sentences 
full  of  wisdom  and  good  feeling,  and  turned  as  only  he  could  turn  them, 
had  given  him  his  literary  blessing,  and  the  advice  to  keep  to  prose.  That 
advice  was  religiously  followed  by  a  family  which  handed  down  through 
three  generations,  in  unbroken  succession  from  father  to  son,  the  good 
traditions  of  the  memoir-writer.  There  is  an  extraordinary  likeness,  in 
form  and  substance,  between  the  writing  of  the  father,  who  served  in  the 
American  war,  and  afterwards  became  French  ambassador  to  Russia;  of 
the  son,  who  told  the  story  of  Austerlitz  and  the  retreat  from  Moscow;  and 
of  the  grandson,  author  of  the  Life  of  Count  Rostopchine.  Which  of  the 
three  wrote  best  is  a  problem  of  the  sort  that  to  those  who  love  books  will 
always  remain  the  idlest  of  questions. 


/ 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON.  THE  DIFFICUL- 
TIES CONNECTED  WITH  TRADE  AND  REVENUE  BECOME 
ACUTE 

Such  was  the  country,  and  such  the  people,  on  which 
the  British  Cabinet  now  tried  the  experiment  of  carry- 
ing through  a  political  policy  by  the  pressure  of  an 
armed  force.  They  were  blind  to  the  truth  which  Byron, 
a  genuine  statesman,  expressed  in  the  sentence,  "  The 
best  prophet  of  the  future  is  the  past."  For  that  experi- 
ment had  never  succeeded  when  an  English-speaking 
population  was  made  the  subject  of  it.  It  had  been 
tried  under  the  Commonwealth  when  the  Major-Generals 
administered  England  and  the  Journal  of  George  Fox, 
read  side  by  side  with  Hudibras,  proves  that  the  saints 
liked  being  ruled  by  saints  in  red  coats  almost  as  little 
as  did  the  sinners.  It  had  been  tried  after  the  Restora- 
tion, when  the  Stuarts  espoused  the  cause  of  the  Bishops 
as  against  the  Scotch  Covenanters  ;  and  the  result  was, 
over  the  whole  of  the  south  of  Scotland,  to  kill  the  cause 
of  the  Bishops  and  of  the  Stuarts  too.  And  in  1688  the 
wrath  and  terror  which  the  mere  threat  of  coercion  by 
an  Irish  army  excited  throughout  the  kingdom  did  much 
to  ruin  James  the  Second,  as  it  had  ruined  his  father 
before  him. 

Now  the  same  remedy,  fatal  always  to  the  physician, 
was  applied  to  a  case  that  differed  from  those  which 
preceded  it  only  in  being  more  hopelessly  unsuited  to 
such  a  treatment.  The  character,  the  circumstances, 
and  the  history  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  England  made 
it  certain  that  they  would  feel  the  insult  bitterly  and 
resent  it  fiercely.     It  was  a  measure  out  of  which,  from 

100 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  ioi 

the  very  nature  of  it,  no  good  could  be  anticipated  ;  and 
it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  the  authors  of  it,  in 
their  heart  of  hearts,  expected  or  desired  that  any  good 
should  come.  The  crime  of  Massachusetts  was  that  she 
refrained  from  buying  British  goods,  and  that  she  had 
petitioned  the  Crown  in  respectful  terms.  Fifty  regi- 
ments could  not  oblige  her  to  do  the  one,  or  make  her 
think  that  she  had  been  wrong  in  having  done  the  other. 
And,  in  truth,  the  action  of  the  British  Government  was 
intended  to  punish,  and  not  to  persuade.  It  was  a  de- 
vice essentially  of  the  same  sinister  class  as  the  Dragon- 
nades  which  preceded  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes ;  less  trenchant,  indeed,  in  its  operation,  owing 
to  the  difference  in  type  of  the  instruments  employed ; 
for  British  soldiers  were  too  good  to  be  set  to  such  work, 
and  far  too  manly  and  kind-hearted  to  do  it  efficaciously. 
But  the  motives  that  suggested  and  brought  about  the 
military  occupation  of  Boston  showed  poorly,  in  one 
important  respect,  even  by  the  side  of  those  which  actu- 
ated Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  his  clerical  advisers.  In 
both  cases  there  was  ruffled  pride,  the  determination  at 
all  costs  to  get  the  upper  hand,  and  want  of  sympathy 
which  had  deepened  down  into  estrangement  and  posi- 
tive ill-will.  But  the  French  monarch  at  least  believed 
that,  by  making  his  subjects  miserable  in  this  world,  he 
would  possibly  save  their  souls  in  the  next,  and  would 
undoubtedly  cleanse  his  dominions  from  the  stain  of 
heresy ;  whereas  the  quarrel  between  George  the  Third 
and  his  people  beyond  the  sea  was  of  the  earth,  earthy. 
As  the  Elizabethan  poet  had  said  in  good  prose  :  "  Some 
would  think  the  souls  of  princes  were  brought  forth  by 
some  more  weighty  cause  than  those  of  meaner  persons. 
They  are  deceived  ;  there's  the  same  hand  to  them  ;  the 
like  passions  sway  them.  The  same  reason  that  makes 
a  vicar  go  to  law  for  a  tithe-pig,  and  undo  his  neigh- 
bours, makes  them  spoil  a  whole  province,  and  batter 
down  goodly  cities  with  the  cannon."1 

1  Webster's  Duchess  of  Malfi,  Act  ii.,  Scene  I. 


102  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  King  was  determined  to  stand  on  his  extreme 
rights;  and  he  met  his  match  in  the  Americans.  In 
their  case  he  had  to  do  with  people  accurately  and  mi- 
nutely acquainted  with  what  was  due  to  them  and  from 
them,  and  little  likely  to  miss,  or  refrain  from  pressing 
to  the  utmost,  any  single  point  which  told  in  their 
favour.  Burke  was  informed '  by  an  eminent  bookseller 
that  in  no  branch  of  his  business,  after  tracts  of  popular 
devotion,  were  so  many  volumes  exported  to  the  colo- 
nies as  those  which  related  to  the  law.  Nearly  as 
many  copies  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries  had  been 
sold  in  America  as  in  England.  So  eager  were  the 
colonists  to  read  our  treatises  on  jurisprudence  that  they 
had  fallen  into  the  way  of  reprinting  them  across  the 
Atlantic;  a  habit,  it  must  be  allowed,  which  they  soon 
applied  on  a  generous  scale  to  more  attractive  classes 
of  literature.  Burke  had  observed  and  investigated 
America  with  the  same  passionate  curiosity  that  he  sub- 
sequently bestowed  upon  India.  He  arrived  at  the 
conclusion  that  a  circumstance  which  made  against 
peace,  unless  the  British  Government  reverted  to  the 
paths  of  caution,  was  to  be  found  in  the  addiction  of 
the  colonists  to  the  study  of  the  law.  "  This  study,"  he 
said,  "  renders  men  acute,  inquisitive,  dexterous,  prompt 
in  attack,  ready  in  defence,  full  of  resources.  In  other 
countries  the  people,  more  simple,  and  of  a  less  mercu- 
rial cast,  judge  of  an  ill  principle  in  government  only 
by  an  actual  grievance;  there  they  anticipate  the  evil, 
and  judge  of  the  pressure  of  the  grievance  by  the  bad- 
ness of  the  principle.  They  augur  misgovernment  at  a 
distance,  and  snuff  the  approach  of  tyranny  in  every 
tainted  breeze."  1 

The  times  were  such  that  the  lawyers  in  America, 
like  all  other  men  there,  had  to  choose  their  party.  In 
the  Government  camp  were  those  favoured  persons 
whom  the  Crown  regularly  employed  in  court;  and 
those  who  held,  or  looked  to  hold,  the  posts  of  distinc- 

1  Mr.  Burke's  Speech  on  moving  his  Resolution  for  Conciliation  with 
the  Colonies. 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  103 

tion  and  emolument  with  which  the  colonies  abounded. 
For  the  Bar  in  America,  as  in  Ireland  and  Scotland  to 
this  day,  was  a  public  service  as  well  as  a  profession. 
But,  with  these  exceptions,  most  lawyers  were  patriots ; 
for  the  same  reason  that,  (as  the  royal  Governors  com- 
plained,) every  patriot  was,  or  thought  himself,  a  lawyer. 
The  rights  and  liberties  of  the  province  had  long  been 
the  all-pervading  topic  of  conversation  in  Massachusetts. 
There  were  few  briefs  for  a  learned  gentleman  who,  in 
General  Putnam's  tavern  or  over  Mr.  Hancock's  dining- 
table,  took  the  unpopular  side  in  an  argument;  espe- 
cially if  he  did  not  know  how  to  keep  those  who  came 
to  him  for  advice  on  the  safe  side  of  a  penal  statute. 
"  Look  into  these  papers,"  said  an  English  Attorney- 
General  in  1768,  "and  see  how  well  these  Americans 
are  versed  in  the  Crown  law.  I  doubt  whether  they 
have  been  guilty  of  an  overt  act  of  treason,  but  I  am 
sure  that  they  have  come  within  a  hair's  breadth  of 
it."  x  Leading  merchants,  who  were  likewise  eminently 
respectable  smugglers  on  an  enormous  scale,  were  the 
best  clients  of  a  Boston  advocate.  Their  quarrels  with 
the  Commissioners  of  Revenue  brought  him  large  fees, 
and  coveted  opportunities  for  a  display  of  eloquence. 
His  wits  as  a  casuist  were  sharpened  by  a  life-time  of 
nice  steering  among  the  intricacies  of  the  commercial 
code ;  and  the  experience  which  he  thence  gained 
taught  him  as  a  politician  to  assume  higher  ground,  and 
to  demand  that  trade  should  be  as  free  and  open  to 
British  subjects  in  the  New  World  as  it  was  to  those  in 
the  Old.2  His  public  attitude  was  stiffened  by  the 
recollection  of  a  threat  which  had  been  levelled  against 
his  private  interests.  A  secondary,  but  an  evident  and 
even  confessed,  object  of  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  to 
impose  a  prohibitory  tax  upon  the  manufacture  of  legal 

1  Bancroft's  History,  Epoch  III.,  chapter  37. 

2  These  are  the  words  of  Mr.  Sabine  in  his  Historical  Essay  at  the  com- 
mencement of  his  two  volumes  on  the  American  Loyalists.  His  descrip- 
tion of  the  opinions  prevalent  in  the  several  professions  at  the  commencement 
of  the  Revolution  is  amusing  and  instructive. 


104  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

documents,  and  thereby  to  injure  the  practice,  and  pare 
away  the  gains,  of  those  unofficial  lawyers  among  whom 
were  to  be  found  the  most  skilful  and  stubborn  oppo- 
nents of  the  Government. 

Already  the  commercial  prosperity  of  the  mother- 
country  was  grievously  impaired.  The  colonists  had 
met  Charles  Townshend's  policy  by  an  agreement  not 
to  consume  British  goods ;  and  the  value  of  such  goods 
exported  to  New  England,  New  York,  and  Pennsylvania 
fell  in  a  single  year  from  1,330,000/ to  400,000/.  Wash- 
ington, when  he  sent  his  annual  order  for  a  supply  of 
European  commodities  to  London,  enjoined  his  corre- 
spondent to  forward  none  of  the  articles  unless  the  offen- 
sive Act  of  Parliament  was  in  the  meantime  repealed. 
Less  scrupulous  patriots  found  reason  to  wish  that  they 
had  followed  his  example.  Mackrabie  relates  how  two 
Philadelphians  had  sent  over  for  a  Cheshire  cheese  and 
a  hogshead  of  English  Entire  Butt.  "  These  delicacies 
happened  unfortunately  to  have  been  shipped  from 
Europe  after  the  Resolutions  on  this  side  had  tran- 
spired, and  in  consequence  the  Committee  took  the 
liberty  to  interfere.  The  purchasers  made  a  gallant 
stand,  but  their  opposition  was  in  vain.  They  cursed 
and  swore,  kicked,  and  cuffed,  and  pulled  noses ;  but 
the  catastrophe  was  that  the  prisoners  were  regaled 
with  the  cheese  and  porter.  They  have  sent  away  a 
ship  loaded  with  malt  to-day.  Nobody  could  either 
buy  or  store  it."  The  phraseology  of  the  movement 
against  taxation  without  representation  appeared  in 
odd  places.  A  mechanic,  whose  shop  had  been  broken 
open,  advertised  a  reward  for  the  apprehension  of  the 
thief,  and  reminded  his  fellow-citizens  how  hard  it  was 
for  a  man  to  part  with  his  own  property  without  his 
own  consent.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  Grenville,  as 
the  father  of  the  Stamp  Act,  till  his  death,  and  long 
after  it,  came  in  for  much  of  the  discredit  which  prop- 
erly belonged  to  Charles  Townshend.  "  I  would  not  as 
a  friend,"  Mackrabie  wrote  from  Philadelphia,  "  advise 
Mr.  George  Grenville  to  come  and  pass  a  summer  in 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  105 

North  America.  It  might  be  unsafe."  This  was  in 
1768.  But  as  late  as  1773  Burke,  who,  of  all  people, 
had  been  asked  by  a  friend  in  Virginia  to  send  him  out 
a  clever  lad  accustomed  to  ride  light  weights,  wrote  to 
Lord  Rockingham :  "  If  poor  George  Grenville  was 
alive,  he  would  not  suffer  English  jockeys  to  be  entered 
outwards  without  bond  and  certificate :  or  at  least  he 
would  have  them  stamped  or  excised,  to  bear  the  bur- 
dens of  this  poor  oppressed  country,  and  to  relieve  the 
landed  interest."  Ten  years  later  the  poets  of  Brooks's 
Club  were  still  singing  of 

Grenville's  fondness  for  Hesperian  gold  ; 
And  Grenville's  friends,  conspicuous  from  afar, 
In  mossy  down  incased  and  bitter  tar. 

All  the  British  regiments  which  had  ever  sailed  from 
Cork  or  Portsmouth  could  not  force  Americans  to  pur- 
chase British  merchandise.  Nor  was  it  possible  that 
the  presence  of  troops,  under  a  free  constitution  such 
as  Massachusetts  still  enjoyed,  should  do  anything 
towards  the  better  government  of  the  colony,  or  the 
solution  of  the  difficulties  which  had  arisen  between  the 
Assembly  and  the  Crown.  One  function  the  soldiers 
might  be  called  upon  to  discharge;  and  it  was  evidently 
in  the  minds  of  the  Cabinet  which  sent  them  out.  As 
soon  as  the  news  of  their  arrival  at  Boston  had  reached 
London,  the  supporters  of  the  Ministry,  in  manifest 
concert  with  the  Treasury  Bench,  moved  an  address  to 
the  King  praying  that  persons  who,  in  the  view  of  the 
Governor  of  Massachusetts,  had  committed,  or  had  failed 
to  disclose,  acts  of  treason  might  be  brought  over  to 
England  and  tried  under  a  statute  of  Henry  the  Eighth. 
The  Ministers  themselves  moved  resolutions  framed  with 
the  object  of  indicating  for  the  Governor's  guidance 
that,  in  the  action  which  the  Assembly  of  the  colony  had 
taken,  and  in  the  votes  which  it  had  passed,  treason  had 
already  been  committed.  Such  a  proposal  was  shocking 
to  many  independent  members  of  Parliament,  and  most 
of  all  to  those  who  knew  by  experience  what  a  serious 


106  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

matter  a  voyage  from  America  was,  even  in  a  case 
where  there  would  be  little  prospect  indeed  of  a  return 
journey.  Thomas  Pownall,  who  had  governed  Massa- 
chusetts strongly  and  discreetly  during  Pitt's  great  war, 
was  earnest  in  his  remonstrances ;  and  his  views  were 
enforced  by  Captain  Phipps,  afterwards  Lord  Mulgrave, 
a  competent  and  experienced  navigator.  They  com- 
mented forcibly  on  the  cruelty  and  injustice  of  dragging 
an  individual  three  thousand  miles  from  his  family, 
his  friends,  and  his  business,  "  from  every  assistance, 
countenance,  comfort,  and  counsel  necessary  to  support 
a  man  under  such  trying  circumstances,"  in  order  that, 
with  the  Atlantic  between  him  and  his  own  witnesses, 
he  might  be  put  to  peril  of  his  life  before  a  panel  of 
twelve  Englishmen,  in  no  true  sense  of  the  word  his  peers. 
Of  those  jurymen  the  accused  person  would  not  possess 
the  personal  knowledge  which  alone  could  enable  him 
to  avail  himself  of  his  right  to  challenge ;  while  they  on 
their  side  would  infallibly  regard  themselves  as  brought 
together  to  vindicate  the  law  against  a  criminal  of 
whose  guilt  the  responsible  authorities  were  fully  as- 
sured, but  who  would  have  been  dishonestly  acquitted 
by  a  Boston  jury.  All  this  was  said  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  listened  to  most  unwillingly  by  the  ad- 
herents of  the  Ministry,  who  after  a  while  drowned  argu- 
ment by  clamour.  A  large  majority  voted  to  establish 
what  was,  for  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  new  tribunal, 
to  take  cognisance  of  an  act  which,  since  it  had  been 
committed,  had  been  made  a  crime  by  an  ex  post  facto 
decree.  Parliament  had  done  this  in  a  "single  evening, 
without  hearing  a  tittle  of  evidence,  and,  (after  a  not  very 
advanced  stage  in  the  proceedings,)  without  consenting 
to  hear  anything  or  anybody  at  all.  But  a  House  of  Com- 
mons, which  had  so  often  dealt  with  Wilkes  and  the 
Middlesex  electors,  had  got  far  beyond  the  point  of  car- 
ing to  maintain  a  judicial  temper  over  matters  affecting 
the  rights,  the  liberty,  and  now  at  last  the  lives  of  men.1 

1  The  Government  were   in  a  bad  House  of  Commons  mess.     They 
could  not  produce  a  copy  of  the  alleged  treasonable  Resolution  of  the 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  107 

That  which  was  the  sport  of  a  night  at  Westminster 
was  something  very  different  to  those  whom  it  most 
concerned  at  Boston.  The  chiefs  of  the  popular  party 
saw  the  full  extent  of  their  danger  in  a  moment.  They 
already  had  done  what  placed  their  fortunes,  and  in  all 
probability  their  very  existence,  at  the  mercy  of  the 
Governor;  and,  whether  the  blow  fell  soon,  or  late,  or 
not  at  all,  their  peace  of  mind  was  gone.  To  poor  men, 
as  most  of  them  were,  transportation  to  England  at  the 
best  meant  ruin.  Their  one  protection,  the  sympathy 
of  their  fellow-citizens,  was  now  powerless  to  save  them. 
Time  was  when  Governor  Bernard  would  have  thought 
twice  before  he  laid  hands  on  the  leaders  of  public  opin- 
ion in  a  country  where  the  arm  of  authority  was  strong 
only  when  it  had  public  opinion  with  it.  He  was  not 
likely  to  forget  how,  when  the  populace  were  hanging 
the  Boston  stamp  distributor  in  effigy,  the  civil  power 
requested  that  the  Militia  might  be  called  out  by  beat  of 
drum,  and  how  the  colonel  replied  that  his  drummers 
were  in  the  mob.  To  arrest  Samuel  Adams  and  John 
Hancock,  even  with  their  own  concurrence,  by  the  aid 
of  such  peace  officers  as  cared  to  respond  to  a  summons, 
was  in  the  view  of  the  Governor  a  sufficiently  arduous 
undertaking.  And  when  the  time  for  their  deportation 
came,  it  would  have  been  a  more  serious  business  still 
to  march  them,  through  streets  crowded  with  angry 
patriots,  down  to  a  wharf  over  the  edge  of  which  the 
crews  of  half  a  hundred  coasting  vessels  would  have 
tossed  the  constables,  and  the  sheriff  too,  with  as  little 
scruple  as  they  would  have  run  a  cargo  of  sugar  on  a 
dark  night  into  a   creek   of    Rhode    Island.     But   the 

Massachusetts  Assembly,  on  which  their  own  proposals  were  founded. 
Governor  Pownall,  backed  by  Burke,  denied  that  such  a  Resolution  was  in 
existence.  "  The  chorus-men,  who  at  proper  times  call  for  the  question, 
helped  them  out  at  this  dead  lift,  by  an  incessant  recitative  of  the  words, 
'  Question,  question,  question.'  At  length,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
the  whole  House  in  confusion  and  laughing,  the  Resolutions  and  addresses 
were  agreed  to."  Such  is  the  account  given,  in  expressive  but  not  very 
official  language,  in  the  Parliamentary  History  for  the  26th  of  January, 
1769. 


IOS  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

troops  had  come,  and  the  ships  which  had  brought  them 
were  never  likely  to  be  far  away;  and  that  difficulty 
was  a  thing  of  the  past.  With  a  quay  commanded  by 
the  cannon  of  men-of-war,  and  a  harbour  alive  with 
their  armed  boats,  and  with  a  forest  of  bayonets  on 
land,  there  would  be  no  fear  of  a  rescue  or  even  of  a 
riot.  All  prominent  opponents  of  the  Government  hence- 
forward lived  in  the  knowledge  that  their  fate  was  at 
the  arbitrary  disposal  of  one  whom,  as  an  officer  of  the 
State,  they  had  braved  and  baffled ;  and  who  insisted  on 
regarding  them,  each  and  all,  as  his  private  enemies. 
The  revival  of  the  old  Tudor  statute,  which  kept  a  hal- 
ter suspended  over  the  neck  of  every  public  man  whom 
the  people  of  Massachusetts  followed  and  trusted,  was 
a  device  as  provocative,  and  in  the  end  proved  to  be  as 
foolish  and  as  futile,  as  the  operation  which  in  the  story 
of  our  great  civil  contest  is  called,  not  very  accurately, 
the  arrest  of  the  five  members. 

From  the  day  that  the  troops  landed  all  chance  of  a 
quiet  life,  for  those  who  valued  it,  was  over  and  done 
with.  John  Adams,  who  was  intent  on  making  a  liveli- 
hood and  who,  to  use  his  own  words,  had  very  little 
connection  with  public  affairs,  and  hoped  to  have  less, 
observed  with  disapproval  that  endeavours  were  being 
systematically  pursued  "by  certain  busy  characters  to 
kindle  an  immortal  hatred  between  the  inhabitants  of 
the  lower  class  and  the  soldiers."  But  the  fact  was 
that  every  class,  without  any  prompting  from  above  or 
below,  had  its  own  reasons  for  disliking  the  military 
occupation  of  their  city.  Boston  was  a  non-official 
community,  where  no  man  was  under  orders,  and  where 
every  man  worked  every  day  and  all  day  to  get  his 
bread  by  supplying,  in  one  shape  or  another,  the 
natural  wants  and  requirements  of  the  society  in  which 
he  lived.  But  now  the  whole  place  was  invaded  by 
officialism  in  its  most  uncompromising  and  obtrusive 
form.  For  every  two  civilians  there  was  at  least  one 
wearer  of  a  uniform,  whose  only  occupations  were  to 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  109 

draw  his  pay,  to  perform  his  routine  duties,  and  to  obey 
some  one  who  was  placed  above  him.  Boston  was 
Whig;  and  the  army,  from  top  to  bottom,  with  few 
exceptions,  was  ultra-Tory.  Charles  Lee,  who  had 
served  with  distinction  up  to  the  rank  of  colonel  in 
a  royal  regiment,  —  and  with  whom  royal  officers 
lived,  and  always  continued  to  live,  on  free  and  equal 
terms,  —  remembered  an  occasion  when  a  clever  and 
spirited  subaltern  inveighed  against  David  Hume  as  a 
champion  of  divine  right  and  absolute  monarchy.  The 
young  man  was  taken  to  task  by  a  veteran  who  rebuked 
him  for  speaking  with  irreverence  of  Charles  the  First, 
and,  with  more  loyalty  than  logic,  pronounced  that  such 
sentiments  were  indecent  and  ungrateful  in  those  who 
ate  the  King's  bread.1  That  was  the  creed  of  the 
mess-room ;  ominous  enough  in  the  days  of  a  sovereign 
who,  now  that  the  Stuarts  were  no  longer  a  danger  to 
himself,  was  only  too  ready  to  take  them  for  his  model. 
The  social  tone  of  military  circles  was  even  more 
uncongenial  to  the  atmosphere  of  Boston  than  their 
political  opinions.  That  tone  has  been  changing  for 
the  better  ever  since,  and  never  so  quickly  and  so 
steadily  as  during  the  period  which  covers  the  career 
of  those  who  now  command  our  brigades.  The  British 
officer  of  this  generation  is  a  picked  man  to  begin  with. 
He  enters  the  army  at  an  age  when  he  has  already  laid 
the  ground  of  a  liberal  education,  and  in  after  life  he 
never  misses  an  opportunity  of  perfecting  his  profes- 
sional acquirements.  In  Indian  and  colonial  service  he 
gains  a  large  and  even  cosmopolitan  view  of  affairs  and 
men,  while  he  has  always  present  to  his  mind  the  obli- 
gation to  maintain  the  credit  of  the  country  abroad  by 
his  personal  conduct  and  demeanour.  And,  when  em- 
ployed at  home,  he  is  accustomed  to  act  with  the  Militia 
and  Volunteers ;  to  take  a  share  in  the  work  of  their 
organisation  and  their  discipline ;  to  recognise  their 
merits  ;  and  to  make  full  allowance  for  deficiencies  from 

1  Memoirs  of  Major-General  Lee.     Dublin,  1792.     Page  10 1. 


HO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

which  citizen  soldiers  can  never  be  exempt  in  peace,  or 
in  the  first  campaign  of  a  war. 

It  was  a  different  story  with  an  officer  whose  lot  was 
cast  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
When  on  active  service  in  Germany  every  one,  against 
whom  or  by  whose  side  he  fought,  was  a  regular  soldier ; 
and,  in  the  case  of  our  Prussian  allies,  a  regular  of  the 
regulars.  When  he  returned  to  England,  to  quarters  in 
a  Cathedral  town,  (or,  if  a  guardsman,  to  his  lodging  in 
St.  James's  Street,)  he  moved  in  social  circles  where  no 
single  person  pursued  any  one  of  those  work-a-day  trades 
and  callings  which  in  New  England  ranked  for  as  good 
as  the  best.  With  such  a  training  and  such  associations, 
a  man  who  possessed  no  more  than  the  average  share 
of  good  sense  and  good  feeling  cared  little  for  colonial 
opinion,  whether  civil  or  military,  and  seldom  went  the 
right  way  to  conciliate  it.  Pitt  did  his  best  to  correct 
what  was  amiss ;  and,  when  he  could  lay  his  hand  on  a 
general  of  the  right  sort,  he  did  much.  Young  Lord 
Howe,  who  led  the  advance  against  Ticonderoga  in  1758, 
—  and  who  in  truth,  as  long  as  he  was  alive,  commanded 
the  expedition,  —  tried  hard  to  break  down  the  barrier 
between  the  two  sections  of  his  army  by  precept,  and 
by  his  fine  example.  But  when  he  was  shot  dead,  skir- 
mishing with  Israel  Putnam's  Rangers  in  front  of  his 
own  regiment,  the  Fifty-fifth  of  the  line,  he  left  no  one 
behind  him,  south  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  who  had  the 
capacity  or  inclination  to  carry  out  the  great  Minister's 
wise  and  large  policy.  The  relations  of  royal  and  pro- 
vincial officers  became  anything  but  fraternal,  and  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  American  companies  were  only  too 
ready  to  espouse  the  quarrel  of  their  leaders.  American 
colonels,  during  the  Ticonderoga  campaign,  complained 
that  they  were  hardly  ever  summoned  to  a  council  of 
war,  and  that,  until  the  orders  came  out,  they  knew  no 
more  of  what  was  to  be  done  than  the  Serjeants.  The 
men  of  an  American  regiment,  which  was  stationed 
on  the  Hudson,  conceived  themselves  affronted  by  an 
English  captain,  and  nearly  half  the  corps  disbanded 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  II I 

itself  and  marched  off  home.  An  English  Quartermaster- 
General,  great  in  nothing  but  oaths,  —  whom  his  own 
Commander-in-Chief  described  as  a  very  odd  man,  with 
whom  he  was  sorry  to  have  any  concern,  —  was  told  by 
a  Virginian  colonel  that  he  would  rather  break  his  sword 
than  serve  with  him  any  longer.  These  incidents,  when 
brooded  over  in  winter  quarters,  engendered  a  dissatis- 
faction which  found  vent  in  a  heated  newspaper  con- 
troversy between  London  and  Boston. 

Mr.  Parkman,  in  his  fascinating  story  of  "  Montcalm 
and  Wolfe,"  as  elsewhere  throughout  his  writings,  pre- 
serves a  carefully  measured  impartiality  of  praise  and 
blame  towards  English  and  French,  regular  soldiers 
and  colonial  levies,  and  even  Indians ;  though  it  cannot 
be  said  these  last  gain,  either  as  men  or  warriors,  by  an 
unvarnished  description.  He  thus  speaks  about  the 
British  officers :  "  Most  of  them  were  men  of  family, 
exceedingly  prejudiced  and  insular,  whose  knowledge 
of  the  world  was  limited  to  certain  classes  of  their 
own  countrymen,  and  who  looked  down  on  all  others, 
whether  foreign  or  domestic.  Towards  the  provincials 
their  attitude  was  one  of  tranquil  superiority,  though  its 
tranquillity  was  occasionally  disturbed  by  what  they  re- 
garded as  absurd  pretensions  on  the  part  of  the  colony 
officers.  The  provincial  officers,  on  the  other  hand,  and 
especially  those  of  New  England,  being  no  less  narrow 
and  prejudiced,  filled  with  a  sensitive  pride  and  a  jeal- 
ous local  patriotism,  and  bred  up  in  a  lofty  appreciation 
of  the  merits  and  importance  of  their  country,  regarded 
British  superciliousness  with  a  resentment  which  their 
strong  love  for  England  could  not  overcome."  1  There 
were  faults  on  both  sides.  But  the  British  officers  had 
the  most  to  give ;  and,  if  they  had  cordially  and  cheer- 
fully taken  their  cue  from  spirits  as  finely  touched  as 
those  of  Wolfe  and  Howe,  their  advances  towards  inti- 
macy with  their  American  comrades  would  have  been 
eagerly  met  and  their  friendship  warmly  valued. 

, 1  Parkman's  Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  chapter  xxi. 


112  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

If  there  was  so  little  sense  of  fellowship  between  the 
regular  army  and  the  colonists  during  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  when  they  were  serving  together  in  the  field  against 
a  common  adversary,  it  may  well  be  believed  that  in  1772 
and  1773  things  did  not  go  pleasantly  in  the  streets  of 
Boston.  The  garrison  was  there,  in  order  to  remind  the 
city  that  Britain's  arm  was  long  and  heavy  and  that  her 
patience  was  exhausted.  It  was  a  situation  without  hope 
from  the  very  first ;  for  it  gave  no  opportunity  for  the 
play  of  kindly  impulses,  and  was  only  too  certain  to  bring 
into  prominence  the  least  estimable  persons  on  either 
side.  There  were  men  of  refinement  and  good  education 
in  the  British  regiments,  and  on  the  staff,  more  especially 
among  those  of  older  standing,  who  would  gladly  have 
employed  their  social  gifts  to  mitigate  the  asperity  of 
politics.  There  were,  as  the  sequel  proved,  some  of  all 
ranks  and  ages  who  had  studied  the  case  of  the  colonists 
closely  enough  to  question  and  condemn  the  action  of 
their  own  Government.  And  there  were  veterans  who 
had  fought  the  enemies  of  their  country  bravely  all  the 
world  over,  without  being  able  to  hate  them,  and  who 
were  still  less  inclined  to  be  harsh  towards  those  whom 
they  regarded  as  her  erring  children.  But  the  winter 
of  discontent  was  so  severe  that  Uncle  Toby  himself 
could  not  have  melted  the  ice  in  a  Boston  parlour.  The 
men  of  the  popular  party,  and  the  women  quite  as  rigidly, 
set  their  faces  like  flint  against  any  show  of  civility,  or 
the  most  remote  approach  to  familiarity.  The  best 
among  the  officers,  forbidden  by  self-respect  to  intrude 
where  they  were  not  welcome,  retired  into  the  back- 
ground, and  left  the  field  clear  for  the  operations  of 
certain  black-sheep  of  the  mess-room,  whom  the  citizens, 
in  the  humour  which  then  prevailed,  came  not  unnatu- 
rally to  look  upon  as  representatives  of  British  character 
and  conduct. 

That  sort  of  military  man,  as  readers  of  the  English 
classics  know,  appeared  frequently  in  the  dramas  and 
novels  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  where  his  self-suf- 
ficiency and  impertinence  were  unsparingly  castigated, 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  113 

although  he  was  sometimes  endowed  with  a  sprightliness 
of  which  in  real  life  little  trace  could  be  found.  The  re- 
cruiting officer  who  travelled  with  Mr.  Spectator  on  his 
return  from  the  visit  to  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley ;  the  ensign 
who  insulted  Tom  Jones ;  the  captain  whom  Roderick 
Random  met  in  the  Bath  coach,  —  were  of  a  type  which 
long  ago  became  extinct  in  our  army.  But  of  old  days 
that  type  was  much  in  evidence,  as  many  a  quiet  and 
inoffensive  person  everywhere,  but  especially  in  the 
colonies,  knew  to  his  cost.  For,  when  these  gentlemen 
disported  themselves  in  American  society,  they  were  in 
the  habit  of  parading  a  supreme  disdain  for  every  one 
who  did  not  wear  a  uniform.  To  all  such  they  applied 
indiscriminately  the  name  of  "  Mohairs,"  an  epithet 
which  still  rankled  in  the  mind  of  many  a  brave  man 
after  he  had  worn  to  tatters  more  than  one  uniform  while 
fighting  against  the  cause  to  which  the  services  of  these 
reprobates  were  so  great  a  discredit  and  so  small  a  gain.1 
In  undisturbed  times,  and  in  cities  against  which  the 
Government  that  employed  them  did  not  bear  a  grudge, 
their  contempt  for  civilians  found  expression  in  acts  of 
buffoonery,  the  victims  of  which  were  cautiously  but  not 
always  judiciously  chosen.  A  Philadelphian  writer  of 
the  period  relates  the  feats  of  a  pair  of  officers  who  made 
themselves  notorious  by  a  series  of  practical  jokes,  marked 
with  scanty  fun  and  great  impudence,  and  directed  against 
citizens  of  pacific  appearance  and  occupations.  At  length 
the  worst  of  the  two  happened  to  mistake  his  man,  and 
received  a  lesson  which  he  was  not  likely  soon  to  forget. 
The  nature  of  such  pranks,  when  their  perpetrators 
were  sober,  give  some  faint  indication  of  what  they 
permitted  themselves  in  their  hours  of  conviviality;  for 
those  were  days  when  to  drink  more  than  was  good 
for  him,  —  or  indeed  more  than  would  have  been  good 
for  himself  and  his  neighbours  on  either  side  of  him,  — 
was  a  duty  which  no  one  could  decline  except  a  man  of 
unusual  resolution,  or  of  a  grade  in  the  army  higher 
than  any  which  these  worthies  were  ever  likely  to  attain. 

1  Garden's  Revolutionary  Anecdotes, 


114  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Mackrabie,  who  between  1768  and  1770  was  made 
much  at  home  in  the  garrisons  of  America,  was  very 
candid  in  keeping  his  brother-in-law  informed  of  the 
price  which  he  paid  for  the  privilege.  "  We  have  been 
most  hospitably  and  genteelly  entertained,"  he  writes 
from  Fort  Pitt,  (as  Fort  Duquesne  had  been  styled  ever 
since  it  fell  into  British  hands,)  "and  allowing  for  the 
politesse  a  la  militaire  which  obliges  us  to  compound 
for  being  un  pen  entire's  at  least  once  a  day,  we  pass 
our  time  most  agreeably."  On  the  fourth  of  June  at 
New  York  he  anticipates  that  the  General,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  will  make  all  the  officers  in  the  town  drunk 
at  his  house  in  honour  of  the  King's  birthday.  In 
another  letter  he  gives  a  description  of  serenading,  as 
practised  in  Philadelphia.  "  The  manner  is  as  follows. 
We  with  four  or  five  young  officers  of  the  regiment  in 
barracks  drink  as  hard  as  we  can,  to  keep  out  the  cold, 
and  about  midnight  sally  forth,  attended  by  the  band, 
—  horns,  clarinets,  hautboys,  and  bassoons,  —  march 
through  the  streets,  and  play  under  the  window  of  any 
lady  you  choose  to  distinguish,  which  they  esteem  a 
high  compliment."  In  1770,  when  feeling  was  already 
so  hot  that  a  good  Englishman  should  have  been  care- 
ful to  evince  his  loyalty  to  the  King  by  courtesy  and 
forbearance  towards  the  King's  subjects,  he  was  invited 
to  join  in  celebrating  St.  George's  Day  at  a  banquet 
attended  by  all  the  native-born  Englishmen  in  the  city. 
"  We  should  have  had,"  he  writes,  "  the  Governor  at  our 
head,  but  that  the  party  was  only  proposed  two  days  be- 
fore. However,  we  met  at  a  tavern,  stuffed  roast  beef 
and  plum  pudding,  and  got  drunk,  pour  Vhonnciir  de  St. 
George ;  wore  crosses,  and  finished  the  evening  at  the 
play-house,  where  we  made  the  people  all  chorus  '  God 
save  the  King,'  and  '  Rule  Britannia,'  and  '  Britons  strike 
home,'  and  such  like  nonsense,  and,  in  short,  conducted 
ourselves  with  all  the  decency  and  confusion  usual  on 
such  occasions."  1 

1  Mackrabie  to  Francis,  Fort  Pitt,  14th  July,  1770;  New  York,  4th  June, 
1768  ;   Philadelphia,  9th  March,  1768  ;  Philadelphia,  24th  April,  1770. 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  115 

Those  manners,  unrebuked  and  even  tacitly  encour- 
aged in  high  military  quarters,  were  not  likely  to  win 
back  the  affections  of  a  community  which  still  walked 
in   the   footsteps    of   its  early  founders.     Mr.  Thomas 
Hollis,  —  a  learned  English  antiquary,  and  an  enterpris- 
ing art-collector,    with   the  success  which  falls  to  him 
who  is  early  in  that  field,  —  had  been  a  munificent  bene- 
factor to  American  colleges,  and  most  of  all  to  Harvard. 
He  maintained  with  the  leading  scholars  and  divines  of 
America   very   close   relations   of   friendship,    of  good 
offices,  and,  whenever  the  opportunity  offered  itself,  of 
hospitality.     Indeed,  his  position  in  reference  to  New 
England  was  very  much  that  of  the  Proxenus  of  a  for- 
eign State  in  the  cities  of  ancient  Greece.     He  knew 
the  colonists  of  old;  and,  if  the  Ministry  had  consulted 
him,  he  could  have  put  them  into  communication  with 
informants    and   advisers   of  a  higher  stamp  than  the 
broken-down  office-holders  and  subsidised  news-writers 
who  were  their  confidential  correspondents  across  the 
ocean.     "The   people    of    Boston    and    Massachusetts 
Bay,"  so  Hollis  wrote  within  a  month  of  the  day  that 
the   troops   sailed   for  America,  "are,  I  suppose,  take 
them  as  a  body,  the  soberest,  most  knowing,  virtuous 
people  at  this  time  upon  earth.     All  of  them  hold  Revo- 
lution principles,  and  were  to  a  man,  till  disgusted  by 
the  Stamp  Act,  the  staunchest  friends  to  the  house  of 
Hanover."     There   was    a   seriousness,   he  went  on  to 
say,  in  their  conversation  and  deportment  which  in  the 
more   ribald   public   prints  had  obtained  for  them  the 
appellation  of  Boston  Saints  ;  and,  like  the  saints  of  old, 
they  now  had  a  taste  of  persecution.     Although  physi- 
cal cruelty  was  absent,  they  endured  something  of  martyr- 
dom in  the  moral  repugnance  created  by  the  license  and 
the  rioting  with  which  their  much-enduring  town  was 
thenceforward  flooded.     It  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the 
feelings  of  a  quiet  family,  who  had  never  heard  music  out- 
side the  chapel  of  their  own  connection,  when  they  were 
treated  to  a  military  serenade  after  the  style  of  Phila- 
delphia ;  knowing  only  too  well  that,  if  the  ladies  of  the 


Il6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

house  were  suspected  of  liking  the  entertainment,  they 
would  wake  up  some  morning  to  find  their  front  door 
tarred  and  feathered. 

For  they  were  not  all  saints  in  Boston.  In  the  alleys 
which  ran  down  to  the  water-side  there  were  as  rough 
men  of  their  hands  as  in  any  seaport  in  the  world ; 
ardent  patriots  all  of  them,  (with  the  exception  of  a  very 
few  who  took  excellent  care  to  keep  their  sentiments  to 
themselves,)  and  vigilant  censors  and  guardians,  after 
their  own  fashion,  of  the  patriotism  of  others.  Unfort- 
unately these  were  the  inhabitants  of  Boston  who  came 
most  closely  and  frequently  in  contact  with  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  British  army.  It  was  a  pity  that  there 
should  have  been  so  deep  and  impassable  a  gulf  of  mis- 
understanding between  two  sets  of  people  who  had  much 
in  common,  whose  interests  were  in  no  point  adverse, 
and  whose  attitude  of  reciprocal  enmity  was  imposed 
upon  them  from  above.  None  who  are  widely  read  in 
military  memoirs,  — and  there  is  no  nation  more  rich  in 
the  journals  of  privates  and  non-commissioned  officers 
than  our  own,  —  can  doubt  that  the  men  of  Minden, 
like  the  men  of  Salamanca  and  Vittoria,  were  as  honest, 
humane,  and  (under  the  ordinary  temptations  and  trials 
of  military  life)  as  well-conducted  soldiers  as  ever  carried 
a  sick  comrade's  knapsack  or  shared  their  rations  with  a 
starving  peasant.  But  they  knew  very  well  that  their 
presence  in  Boston  was  not  meant  as  a  delicate  attention 
to  the  city,  and  that  to  make  themselves  disagreeable  to 
its  citizens  was  part  of  the  unwritten  order  of  the  day. 
Any  compunction  that  they  might  have  harboured  was 
soon  extinguished  by  the  inexorable  hostility  which  met 
them  at  every  step,  and  hemmed  them  in  from  every 
quarter.  If  they  had  been  a  legion  of  angels  under 
Gabriel  and  Michael  they  would  have  been  just  as  much 
and  as  little  beloved  in  Fish  Street  or  in  Battery  Marsh. 
Their  good  qualities  were  denied  or  travestied,  their 
faults  spied  out  and  magnified.  Men  who  during  Pitt's 
war  never  tired  of  standing  treat  with  soldiers,  now 
talked  of  them  as  idle  drunkards.    If  they  civilly  passed 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  1 17 

the  time  of  day  to  a  woman,  she  drew  herself  aside  with 
a  shudder.  The  very  colour  of  the  cloth  in  which,  in 
order  that  America  might  be  safe  and  great,  English- 
men had  struggled  through  the  surf  at  Louisburg,  and 
scrambled  up  the  heights  of  Abraham,  was  made  for 
them  a  by-word  and  a  reproach.  No  single  circum- 
stance was  employed  with  such  great  injustice,  but  so 
much  effect,  to  excite  disgust  and  derision  as  one  con- 
dition in  their  professional  existence  which,  poor  fellows, 
was  no  fault  of  theirs.  The  custom  of  flogging,  (and 
that  punishment,  in  the  case  of  a  heavy  sentence,  might 
well  mean  death  by  the  most  horrible  of  tortures,) 
revolted,  sometimes  beyond  all  power  of  repression,  the 
humanity  of  the  populations  among  whom  our  troops 
were  quartered,  and  of  the  allies  with  whom  they  served. 
This  feeling  was  strong  in  America,  where  the  sense  of 
personal  dignity  and  inviolability  was  more  deeply  rooted 
than  in  Europe;  and  it  found  expression  in  a  savage 
nickname  which,  as  the  event  showed,  a  man  with  a 
loaded  musket  in  his  hand,  all  the  more  because  he  was 
respectable,  might  find  himself  unable  tamely  to  endure.1 

1  During  the  later  period  of  the  war  a  young  colonist,  hardly  more  than 
a  boy,  deserted  from  Colonel  Tarleton's  corps  in  the  royal  army.  He  was 
sentenced  to  a  thousand  lashes,  and  died  under  them.  On  one  occasion 
an  American  sentinel  saw  a  red  coat  on  the  opposite  bank  of  a  river  and 
gave  the  alarm.  On  closer  inspection  it  was  discovered  to  be  the  cast-off 
uniform  of  a  British  soldier,  who  had  been  flogged  with  such  severity  that 
"  his  lacerated  back  would  admit  of  no  covering." 

The  shock  to  the  popular  sentiment  became  more  intense,  as  time  went 
on,  both  at  home  and  on  the  Continent.  During  the  war  with  Napoleon 
a  battalion  which  had  suffered  terribly  from  illness  in  the  West  Indies,  and 
was  going  out  to  suffer  terribly  at  Walcheren,  was  quartered  at  Ripon  in 
Yorkshire.  A  soldier  was  severely  flogged.  Several  of  his  comrades  fainted 
in  the  ranks;  and  the  inhabitants,  who  had  with  difficulty  been  restrained 
by  a  cordon  of  sentries  from  rushing  in  upon  the  scene  of  execution,  pelted 
the  regiment  on  the  way  back  to  barracks.  After  Salamanca,  as  an  episode 
of  the  triumphal  entry  into  Madrid,  a  culprit  received  eight  hundred  lashes, 
inflicted  by  the  strongest  drummers  and  buglers  in  the  brigade.  The  people 
of  the  city  crowded  about  the  sufferer,  and  would  have  loaded  him  with 
money  if  he  had  been  allowed  to  take  it.  A  German  rifleman  in  the  British 
service  has  left  an  account  of  the  operations  near  Alicante  in  1813.  "The 
inhabitants,"  he  says,  "had  never  had  an  opportunity  of  witnessing  an 
English  military  punishment,  and  the  flogging  of  an  artilleryman  made  a 


\ 


Il8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Boston  through  its  constituted  authorities  met  the 
invasion  with  passive,  but  most  effective  and  irritating, 
resistance.  The  Colonels  called  upon  the  Council  to 
house  and  feed  their  men,  and  were  reminded  that 
under  the  statute  the  city  was  not  bound  to. provide 
quarters  or  supplies  until  the  barracks  in  the  Castle 
were  full ;  and  the  Council  and  the  Colonels  alike  knew 
that  the  regiments  had  been  sent,  not  to  defend  the 
Castle,  but  to  occupy  and  annoy  the  city.  General 
Gage,  the  Commander-in-Chief  in  America,  came  on  from 
New  York  to  find  his  soldiers  sleeping  in  tents  on  the 
Common,  with  a  New  England  winter  rapidly  approach- 
ing. He  tried  his  best  to  insist  that  billets  should  be 
found  for  them ;  but  the  law  was  against  him,  in  a 
country  where,  as  he  sulkily  remarked,  the  law  was 
studied  by  everybody.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
hire  private  houses  at  exorbitant  rates,  and  supply  the 
wants  of  the  troops  through  the  agency  of  the  Com- 
missariat and  at  the  expense  of  the  British  Treasury. 

The  soldiers  were  now  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  with 
nothing  to  do  except  to  clean  their  accoutrements,  to 
mount  guard  in  public  places  which,  before  they  came, 
had  been  as  peaceful  as  Berkeley  Square,  and  to  pick 
quarrels  with  the  townsmen,  who  on  their  side  were  not 
slow  to  take  up  the  challenge.  Every  man  fought  his 
hardest  with  the  weapons  which  were  most  familiar  to 
him.  Samuel  Adams  argued  in  a  series  of  published 
letters  that  it  was  illegal  in  time  of  peace,  without  the 
consent  of  Parliament,  to  keep  up  a  standing  army ; 
and  that  Americans,  who  were  not  represented  in  Parlia- 
ment, were  therefore  suffering  under  a  military  tyranny. 
British  officers  spoke  and  wrote  their  minds  about  the 
treatment  to  which  they  had  been  subjected  in  conse- 

considerable  impression  on  them.     They  cut  down  the  fig-tree  to  which 
he  had  been  tied,  and  even  grubbed  up  the  roots." 

American  Anecdotes,  vol.  i.,  pp.  74  and  399.  The  Vicissitudes  of  a 
Soldiers  Life,  by  John  Green,  late  of  the  68th  Durham  Light  Infantry, 
chapters  ii.  and  x.  Adventures  of  a  Young  Rifleman,  London,  1826, 
chapter  viii. 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  119 

quence  of  the  hostility  of  the  citizens,  and  the  Grand 
Jury  found  bills  against  them  for  slandering  the  city  of 
Boston.  A  captain,  who  bade  his  men  remember,  if  a 
hand  were  laid  on  them,  that  they  wore  side-arms,  and 
that  side-arms  were  meant  for  use,  was  called  upon  to 
answer  before  the  tribunals  for  the  words  which  he  had 
uttered.  Humbler  and  ruder  people  in  either  camp  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  their  superiors ;  and  during  eighteen 
months  insult  and  provocation  were  rife  in  the  air,  and 
the  street  was  seldom  free  for  long  together  from  rough 
play  which  at  any  moment  might  turn  into  bloody  work. 
On  the  evening  of  the  5th  of  March,  1770,  there  came 
a  short  and  sharp  collision  between  a  handful  of  soldiers 
and  a  small  crowd,  voluble  in  abuse,  and  too  free  with 
clubs  and  snowballs.  There  was  a  sputter  of  musketry, 
and  five  or  six  civilians  dropped  down  dead  or  dying. 
That  was  the  Boston  massacre.  The  number  of  killed 
was  the  same  as,  half  a  century  afterwards,  fell  in  St. 
Peter's  Fields  at  Manchester.  It  was  not  less  certain 
that  American  Independence  must  result  from  the  one 
catastrophe  than  that  English  Parliamentary  Reform 
would  result  from  the  other ;  and  in  each  case  the 
inevitable  consequence  took  just  the  same  period  of 
time  to  become  an  accomplished  fact  of  history. 

It  would  be  as  idle  to  apportion  the  shares  of  blame 
among  the  immediate  actors  in  the  miserable  business  as 
to  speculate  on  the  amount  of  the  responsibility  for  an 
explosion  which  attached  itself  to  an  artilleryman  whose 
officer  had  sent  him  into  a  magazine  to  fill  cartridges 
by  the  light  of  an  open  candle.  Of  the  high  parties 
concerned,  the  popular  leaders  hastened  to  put  them- 
selves in  the  right,  and  to  prove  that  the  extemporised 
statesmanship  of  plain  folk  might  be  better  than  any- 
thing which  Privy  Councillors,  and  Lord  Chancellors 
present  and  expectant,  had  to  show.  Their  first  care 
was  to  get  the  soldiers  out  of  the  town ;  and  for  this 
humane  and  public-spirited  object  they  availed  them- 
selves deftly,  and  most  justifiably,  of  the  apprehension 
aroused  in  the  minds  of  the  British  authorities  by  an 


120  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

outburst  of  wrath  such  as  no  American  city  had  hitherto 
witnessed.  All  that  night  the  drums  were  rolling,  and 
the  bells  clashing,  and  the  streets  resounding  with  the 
cry  of  " Town-born,  turn  out,  turn  out!"  The  popula- 
tion was  on  foot,  armed  and  angry ;  and  no  one  went 
home  to  bed  until  the  troops  had  been  ordered  back  to 
barracks,  and  the  captain  who  had  commanded  the  party 
of  soldiers  in  the  fatal  affray  was  in  custody  of  the  Sher- 
iff, and  under  examination  before  the  magistrates.  Next 
morning  there  was  a  public  meeting,  attended  by  almost 
every  able-bodied  man  in  Boston,  and  by  the  first  comers 
of  the  multitudes  which  all  day  long  streamed  in  from 
the  surrounding  country.  There  was  no  bloodshed,  no 
outrage,  no  violence  even  of  language.  After  a  prayer 
for  the  divine  blessing,  at  which  any  opponent  who 
liked  was  at  liberty  to  laugh,  a  committee  of  citizens 
was  gravely  chosen,  and  charged  with  the  duty  of  pro- 
viding, according  to  the  best  of  their  judgment,  for  the 
common  safety.  Samuel  Adams,  Warren,  and  Hancock, 
with  their  colleagues,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Lieutenant- 
Governor  surrounded  by  his  Council  and  the  chief  officers 
of  the  Army  and  Navy  on  the  other,  talked  it  out  through 
the  livelong  day.  There  were  adjournments  for  the  pur- 
pose of  affording  the  representatives  of  the  Crown  an 
opportunity  to  confer  privately  among  themselves,  and 
of  enabling  the  delegates  to  make  their  report  to  the 
people,  who  sate  in  continuous  session,  or  stood  over 
the  whole  space  between  their  own  hall  of  meeting  and 
the  State-house  in  vast  and  ever-increasing  numbers.  It 
was  a  hard  tussle ;  but  fresh  arguments,  which  required 
no  marshalling  or  commenting,  were  coming  in  from 
the  neighbouring  townships  by  hundreds  every  hour. 
The  ominous  prospect  of  the  night  which  was  likely 
to  follow  such  a  day  clenched  the  discussion ;  and  just 
before  dark  a  promise  was  given  that  the  whole  military 
force  should  be  removed  to  the  Castle,  and  three  miles 
of  salt  water  should  be  placed  between  the  troops  and 
the  townspeople. 

Danger  to  public  peace  was  for  the  moment  averted ; 


MILITAR  Y  O  CCUPA  TION  OF  B  OS  TON  1 2 I 

but  there  still  remained  a  matter  which  touched  the 
public  reputation.  The  soldiers  who  had  pulled  the 
triggers  were  to  be  tried  for  their  lives ;  and  Captain 
Preston,  who  had  ordered  them  to  fire  without  the  sanc- 
tion of  a  civil  magistrate,  would  have  been  in  peril  even 
if  local  opinion  had  been  neutral  or  quiescent.  Moved 
by  a  happy  inspiration  he  applied  to  John  Adams  and 
Josiah  Quincy  to  defend  him.  Quincy  was  a  young 
man,  eloquent  for  liberty,  who  had  begun  to  play  a 
great  part  when  his  career  was  cut  short  by  death  at 
the  exact  point  when  the  war  of  words  passed  into  the 
war  of  bullets.1  His  father,  whom  he  loved  and  re- 
spected, wrote  to  dissuade  him  from  accepting  the  brief, 
in  terms  of  vehement  remonstrance.  The  reply,  it  has 
been  truly  said,  was  in  the  vein  which  sometimes  raises 
the  early  annals  of  the  American  Revolution  above  the 
ordinary  level  of  history.  "To  inquire  my  duty,"  the 
son  wrote,  "  and  to  do  it,  is  my  aim.  I  dare  affirm  that 
you  and  this  whole  people  will  one  day  rejoice  that  I 
became  an  advocate  for  the  aforesaid  criminals,  charged 
with  the  murder  of  our  fellow-citizens."  Adams,  some 
years  the  older,  and  with  more  to  lose,  had  the  watchful 
and  jealous  eyes  of  an  exasperated  people  fixed  on  him 
with  concentrated  intensity.  Long  afterwards,  at  the 
age  of  eighty-two,  he  wrote  in  answer  to  the  inquiry  of 
a  friend  :  "  Nothing  but  want  of  interest  and  patronage 
prevented  me  from  enlisting  in  the  army.  Could  I  have 
obtained  a  troop  of  horse  or  a  company  of  foot,  I  should 
infallibly  have  been  a  soldier.  It  is  a  problem  in  my 
mind,  to  this  day,  whether  I  should  have  been  a  coward 
or  a  hero."  As  far  as  physical  danger  went  he  showed, 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  that  he  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  of  a  fight  even  at  times  when  his  first  duty 
towards  his  country  was  to  keep  himself  alive  and  whole. 
And  as  regards  moral  courage,  no  finer  proof  was  ever 
given  than  when  he  undertook  the  defence  of  Captain 
Preston,  and  secured  a  verdict  of  acquittal  by  the  exer- 

1  Adams  heard  the  news  of  Josiah  Quincy's  death  on  the  30th  April, 
1775,  eleven  days  after  Lexington. 


122  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


Xb 


cise  of  an  enormous  industry  and  the  display  of  splendid 
ability. 

A  trial  so  conducted,  and  with  such  a  result,  was  a 
graceful  and  a  loyal  act  on  the  part  of  the  colony ;  and 
the  mother-country  should  not  have  been  behindhand 
to  meet  it  in  the  same  spirit.  The  moment  was  emi- 
nently favourable  for  a  complete  and  permanent  recon- 
ciliation. On  the  very  day  that  the  shots  were  fired  at 
Boston  Lord  North,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
rose  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  move  the  repeal  of 
the  duties  levied  in  America  under  Charles  Townshend's 
Act,  with  the  solitary  exception  of  the  duty  upon  tea. 
The  maintenance  of  that  impost  had  caused  a  division  of 
opinion  in  the  Cabinet,  as  acute  and  defined  as  ever  took 
place  without  then  and  there  breaking  up  a  Ministry. 
The  Duke  of  Grafton,  who  still  was  the  titular  Head 
of  the  Government,  had  only  just  arrived  at  the  age 
when  the  modern  world  begins  to  look  for  discretion  in 
a  public  man.  His  fatal  luck  had  made  him  Prime 
Minister  at  thirty,  with  the  training  of  a  London  rake, 
and  married  most  unhappily,  though  not  worse  than  he 
at  the  time  deserved.  He  had  been  a  novice  in  state- 
craft under  a  royal  master  who  had  a  policy,  while  he 
himself  had  none.  For  the  crown  of  his  misfortune,  his 
faults  and  follies  were  denounced  to  his  contemporaries, 
and  blazoned  forth  for  the  wonder  of  posterity,  by  two 
past  masters  in  the  art  of  invective.  Grafton's  critic  in 
Parliament  was  Edmund  Burke,  the  greatest  man  of 
letters  who  has  given  all  his  best  literary  powers  to 
politics.  And  in  the  public  press  he  was  assailed  by 
Junius,  as  keen  a  politician  as  ever  employed  literature 
for  the  instrument  of  his  righteous  indignation. 

The  lesson  was  sharp.  Grafton  had  taken  it  to 
heart,  and  was  now  intent  on  shaking  off  his  old  self 
and  doing  what  he  could  to  redeem  his  unhappy  past. 
His  reputation  in  the  eyes  of  history  was  already  beyond 
mending.  Burke  and  Junius  had  seen  to  that.  But  it 
was  open  for  him  to  clear  his  conscience,  and  he  now 
took  the  first  step  towards  that  end,  the  importance  of 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  1 23  / 

which  he  was  man  enough  to  estimate  at  its  true  value. 
He  earnestly  recommended  the  Cabinet  to  sacrifice  a 
trumpery  tax  which  brought  into  the  Treasury  a  net 
income  of  three  hundred  pounds.  The  retention  of  it 
cost  the  country  directly  at  least  five  thousand  times  as 
much  money  on  account  of  the  refusal  on  the  part  of  the 
colonies  to  purchase  British  products;  and  indirectly  — 
in  the  shape  of  distrust  and  ill-will,  scandals  and  disturb- 
ances, military  preparations  and  national  dangers  —  an 
account  was  being  run  up  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  ledger, 
the  ultimate  total  of  which  no  man  could  calculate. 
He  was  supported  by  every  member  of  the  Cabinet 
whose  character  stood  high,  or  who  had  served  with 
distinction  in  civil  life,  in  the  field,  or  on  deep  water. 
Lord  Camden  was  with  Grafton  and  so  were  General 
Conway  and  Lord  Granby.  The  famous  admiral,  Sir 
Edward  Hawke,  kept  away  by  illness,  would  other- 
wise have  voted  on  the  same  side.  Against  him  were 
the  Lords  Rochford,  and  Gower,  and  Weymouth,  and 
Hillsborough,  —  a  list  of  personages  who,  (except  that 
some  of  them  were  noted  as  hard-livers  in  a  generation 
when  such  pre-eminence  was  not  easily  won,)  have  been 
preserved  from  oblivion  by  the  mischief  which  on  this 
unique  occasion  they  had  the  opportunity  of  doing. 
Shelburne  had  already  been  driven  from  the  Ministry, 
or  Grafton  would  have  carried  the  day ;  but  the  casting 
vote  now  lay  with  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
and  he  gave  his  voice  for  retaining  the  tax  out  of  defer- 
ence to  the  King,  and  against  his  own  view  of  his  own 
duty. 

George  the  Third  had  dictated  North's  line  of  action; 
but  North  had  to  explain  it  himself  in  Parliament.  On 
the  necessity  of  reconciling  America  he  spoke  cogently, 
and  with  a  depth  of  feeling  which  impressed  his  audi- 
ence. Then  he  approached  the  ungracious  part  of  his 
task,  and  defended  the  continuation  of  the  Tea-duty 
perfunctorily  and  far  from  persuasively.  Conway  ar- 
gued for  the  repeal  of  the  entire  Act,  as  did  Barre  and 
Sir  William  Meredith.     All  men  of  sense  were  united 


124  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  thinking  that  it  was  the  occasion  for  a  complete  and 
final  settlement,  and  not  for  a  compromise.  George 
Grenville  exposed  in  trenchant  terms  the  folly  and  in- 
consequence of  a  course  for  which,  though  he  was  re- 
garded on  both  sides  of  the  ocean  as  the  apostle  of 
colonial  taxation,  he  flatly  refused  to  stultify  himself  by 
voting.  At  one  moment  it  looked  as  if  the  House  of 
Commons  would  take  the  matter  into  its  own  hands, 
and  would  inflict  on  the  Ministers  a  defeat  most  accept- 
able to  all  members  of  the  government  who  had  any  no- 
tion how  to  govern.  But,  when  the  division  came,  the 
Tea-duty  was  retained  by  a  majority  of  sixty-two.  The 
King's  friends  had  been  duly  warned,  and  primed,  and 
mustered  to  do  the  King's  work;  and  never  did  they 
more  richly  earn  the  unanimity  of  condemnation  which 
has  been  awarded  to  them  by  historians  whose  verdict 
has  weight  and  whose  names  are  held  in  honour. 

The  concession  was  partial  and  grudging ;  but  the 
good  effect  which  even  so  it  produced  showed  that  a  frank 
and  complete  renunciation  of  claims  which  were  hateful 
to  America  and  worse  than  unprofitable  to  England 
would  have  reunited  the  two  countries  in  sincere  and 
lasting  friendship.  New  York,  which  had  observed  her 
engagement  to  exclude  British  goods  more  faithfully 
than  any  other  colony,  and  whose  trade  had  suffered  in 
proportion,  now  withdrew  from  the  agreement,  and 
sent  orders  home  for  all  sorts  of  merchandise,  except 
tea.  On  New  Year's  day,  1771,  Dr.  Cooper  wrote  to 
Franklin  from  Boston :  "  You  will  hear,  before  this 
reaches  you,  of  the  acquittal  of  Captain  Preston  and 
the  soldiers  concerned  in  the  action  of  the  5th  of  March. 
Instead  of  meeting  with  any  unfair  or  harsh  treatment, 
they  had  every  advantage  that  could  possibly  be  given 
them  in  a  court  of  justice.  The  agreement  of  the  mer- 
chants is  broken.  Administration  has  a  fair  opportu- 
nity of  adopting  the  mildest  and  most  prudent  measures 
respecting  the  colonies,  without  the  appearance  of  being 
threatened  and  drove."  At  home  the  Ministry  would 
have  been  cordially  supported  in  a  policy  of  indulgence 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  125 

and  consideration  by  the  commercial  men  of  the  entire 
Kingdom.  And  with  good  reason ;  for  the  very  best 
which  possibly  could  be  done  for  British  commerce  was 
to  leave  well  alone.  Jealousy  of  America  was  the  senti- 
ment of  politicians  who  thought  that  they  understood 
trade  better  than  the  traders  themselves,  and  was  not 
shared  by  men  who  knew  business  from  the  inside,  and 
who  lived  by  the  pursuit  of  it.  Burke  was  a  man  of 
business  in  every  respect,  except  that  he  applied  his 
knowledge  and  insight  to  the  profit  of  the  nation  instead 
of  his  own.  It  had  been  finely  said  that  he  worked  as 
hard  and  as  continuously  at  commercial  questions  as  if 
he  was  to  receive  a  handsome  percentage  on  the  com- 
merce of  the  whole  Empire.  He  now  replied  with 
crushing  force  to  the  chief  of  the  amateur  economists 
whose  happiness  was  poisoned  by  the  fear  of  American 
competition.  "  He  tells  us  that  their  seas  are  covered 
with  ships,  and  their  rivers  floating  with  commerce. 
This  is  true ;  but  it  is  with  our  ships  that  the  seas  are 
covered,  and  their  rivers  float  with  British  commerce. 
The  American  merchants  are  our  factors ;  all  in  reality, 
most  even  in  name."  According  to  Burke,1  the  Ameri- 
cans traded,  navigated,  and  cultivated  with  English  cap- 
ital, working  for  the  profit  of  Englishmen,  and  taking 
nothing  for  themselves,  "  except  the  fiecidiuin,  without 
which  even  slaves  will  not  labour." 

In  the  production  and  fabrication  of  goods  it  was  not 
a  question  of  rivalry,  but  of  a  practical  monopoly  for 
British  mills  and  foundries  which  nothing  could  break 
down ;  unless  the  meddling  of  British  public  men  should 
irritate  the  colonists  into  taking  measures  to  supply 
their  own  wants  by  their  own  industry.     The  colonies, 

1  Observations  on  a  late  publication  intitled  "  The  Present  State  of  the 
Nation"  1769.  The  motto  to  Burke's  pamphlet,  taken  from  Ennius,  was 
happily  chosen. 

"  O  Tite,  si  quid  ego  adjuvero,  curamque  levasso, 
Quae  nunc  te  coquit,  et  versat  sub  pectore  fixa, 
Ecquid  erit  pretii  ?  " 

Titus  was  Mr.  George  Grenville. 


126  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

according  to  Franklin,  possessed  no  manufactures  of 
any  consequence.  "In  Massachusetts  a  little  coarse 
woollen  only,  made  in  families  for  their  own  wear. 
Glass  and  linen  have  been  tried,  and  failed.  Rhode 
Island,  Connecticut,  and  New  York  much  the  same. 
Pennsylvania  has  tried  a  linen  manufactory,  but  it  is 
dropped,  it  being  imported  cheaper.  There  is  a  glass 
house  in  Lancaster  County,  but  it  makes  only  a  little 
coarse  ware  for  the  country  neighbours.  Maryland  is 
clothed  all  with  English  manufactures.  Virginia  the 
same,  except  that  in  their  families  they  spin  a  little  cot- 
ton of  their  own  growing.  South  Carolina  and  Georgia 
none.  All  speak  of  the  dearness  of  labour,  that  makes 
manufactures  impracticable."  That  was  the  state  of 
things  before  the  non-importation  agreement.  After  it 
had  been  in  force  a  year,  a  single  town  in  Massachu- 
setts had  made  eighty  thousand  pairs  of  women's  shoes, 
and  was  sending  them  to  the  Southern  colonies,  and  even 
to  the  West  Indies.1  Franklin  never  wearied  of  preach- 
ing that  advantageous  circumstances  will  always  secure 
and  fix  manufactures,  so  long  as  things  are  allowed  to 
take  and  keep  their  natural  course.  "Sheffield,"  he 
exclaimed,  "against  all  Europe  these  hundred  years 
past !  "  And  it  would  have  been  Sheffield  and  Man- 
chester and  Burslem  and  Birmingham  against  all 
Europe,  and  against  all  America  too,  long  enough  for 
every  living  manufacturer  who  had  his  wits  about  him 
to  make  his  fortune,  if  only  George  the  Third  and  his 
Ministers  had  known  when  and  where  it  was  wise  to  do 
nothing.  The  satisfaction  with  which  Englishmen,  who 
had  a  business  connection  with  America,  regarded  a  sit- 
uation which,  as  far  as  their  own  interests  were  con- 
cerned, nothing  could  improve,  was  clearly  indicated  by 
the  dead  silence  into  which  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
the  American  controversy  had  fallen.  During  the  whole 
of  1 77 1,  and  the  two  following  years,  no  debate  on  any 
matter  connected  with  that  question  is  reported  in  the 

1  Franklin  Correspondence,  March  13,  1768,  and  August  3,  1769. 


TRADE   AND  REVENUE 


127 


Parliamentary  History  of  England. 1  The  Historical 
Summary  in  the  "Annual  Register"  for  1773  gives  to 
America  less  than  a  single  column  of  printed  matter. 
In  the  Historical  Summary  for  1775  American  affairs 
fill  a  hundred  and  forty-two  out  of  a  hundred  and  fifty- 
eight  pages. 

It  was  not  otherwise  beyond  the  water.  The  colonies 
generally  acquiesced  in  an  arrangement  under  which 
they  enjoyed  present  tranquillity,  even  though  it  was 
founded  on  the  admission  of  a  principle  containing  the 
germ  of  future  discord.  New  England  was  no  exception. 
"  The  people,"  wrote  Mr.  Johnson  of  Connecticut,  a 
trustworthy  and  cool-headed  servant  of  the  public, 
"  appear  to  be  weary  of  their  altercations  with  the 
mother-country.  A  little  discreet  conduct  on  both  sides 
would  perfectly  re-establish  that  warm  affection  and  re- 
spect towards  Great  Britain  for  which  this  country  was 
once  so  remarkable."  Even  with  regard  to  Massa- 
chusetts the  Governor,  who  made  the  worst  of  every- 
thing, reported  in  September,  1771,  that  there  was  a 
disposition  to  let  the  quarrel  subside. 

But  one  perennial  source  of  discomfort  and  disorder 
remained  in  full  operation.  The  Revenue  laws  were  in 
those  days  ill  obeyed  and  worse  liked  all  the  Empire 
over ;  and  it  was  extremely  difficult  to  enforce  them. 
Communication  by  land  and  sea  was  not  on  system, 
and  traffic  and  travel  were  conducted  along  numerous 
and  ever-varying  channels  by  the  agency  of  rough  and 
ready  men.  The  police  was  insufficient  and  badly 
organised ;  and,  above  all,  the  State,  when  demanding 
its  dues,  had  the  mass  of  the  community  against  >  it. 
From  the  peers  and  members  of  Parliament  who  walked 
ashore  at  Dover,  with  three  embroidered  suits  of  silk 
and  satin  worn  one  inside  another,  down  to  the  poor 
wives  in  the  Kent  and  Sussex  villages  who  drank  their 
smuggled  Dutch  tea  laced  with  smuggled  French  brandy, 

1  In  the  session  of  1772,  (to  be  quite  accurate,)  during  the  progress  of 
the  Annual  Mutiny  Bill  through  the  House  of  Commons  a  few  words  were 
said  about  Court  Martials  in  America. 


128  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  Custom-house  had  no  partisans,  and  few  contributors 
except  under  stern  compulsion.  Nobody  had  a  good 
word  for  it  except  honest  or  timid  traders  whose  market 
was  spoiled  by  illicit  dealing  ;  or  moralists  who  preached 
abstinence  from  smuggling  as  a  counsel  of  protection, 
the  observance  of  which  placed  a  man  out  of  the  reach 
of  temptation  to  graver  crimes.  The  position  is  clearly 
laid  down  by  Franklin.  "  There  are  those  in  the  world 
who  would  not  wrong  a  neighbour,  but  make  no  scruple 
of  cheating  the  King.  The  reverse,  however,  does  not 
hold ;  for  whoever  scruples  cheating  the  King  will  cer- 
tainly not  wrong  his  neighbour." 

In  the  three  kingdoms  practice  was  everywhere  lax; 
while  in  many  districts  the  population  lived  by  smug- 
gling as  generally,  and  almost  as  openly,  as  Lancashire 
lived  by  spinning.  The  Mr.  Holroyd,  who  was  after- 
wards Lord  Sheffield,  complained  to  Arthur  Young  in 
1 77 1  that  want  of  hands  cramped  the  agriculture  of 
Sussex.  "  All  the  lively  able  young  men  are  employed 
in  smuggling.  They  can  have  a  guinea  a  week  as  riders 
and  carriers  without  any  risk.  Therefore  it  is  not  to 
be  expected  that  they  will  labour  for  eight  shillings." 
Lord  Holland's  country  seat  lay  between  Broadstairs 
and  Margate,  across  the  top  of  a  pathway  which  led 
from  the  beach  of  a  convenient  inlet  between  two  chalk 
headlands.  A  party  of  coastguardsmen  inhabit  the  house, 
now  that  they  are  less  wanted.  According  to  George 
Selwyn,  all  Lord  Holland's  servants  were  professed 
smugglers ;  and  Selwyn's  own  servant  made  a  profit  by 
taking  contraband  goods  off  their  hands.  Lord  Carlisle 
sate  on  a  special  Commission  as  the  representative  of  his 
country  at  a  moment  when  she  was  going  into  war  with 
half  the  civilised  world  because  the  Americans  would  not 
pay  the  Tea-duty.  Not  many  years  before  his  Lordship's 
town-mansion  had  been  beset  by  Custom-house  officers. 
It  appeared  that  Lady  Carlisle's  chairman,  like  the  rest 
of  his  fraternity,  used  to  employ  his  leisure,  when  the 
London  season  was  over  and  he  was  no  longer  on  duty 
between  the  poles,  in  landing  tea  surreptitiously  from 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  120, 

the  ships  in  the  river.1  Lord  Dartmouth  had  a  corre- 
spondent in  Cornwall  who  from  time  to  time  gave  him 
information  about  what  was  going  on  in  a  part  of  the 
world  which  lay  a  great  deal  nearer  home  than  the  shores 
of  Maine  and  New  Hampshire.  "  I  am  concerned  in 
the  wine  trade,"  this  gentleman  wrote,  "and  between 
myself  and  partners  we  have  a  considerable  capital  in 
the  trade ;  but  on  account  of  the  smuggling  on  every 
side  of  us,  and  our  rivals  in  trade  doing  such  things  as 
I  trust  our  consciences  ever  will  start  back  from' with 
abhorrence,  we  hardly  make  common  interest  of  our 
money."  Lisbon  wine,  he  goes  on  to  say,  which  no 
honest  merchant  could  import  at  less  than  four  shillings 
a  gallon,  was  sold  throughout  the  county  for  half  a 
crown.  Rum,  which  had  paid  duty,  did  not  reimburse 
the  importer  at  less  than  nine  shillings  ;  but  everybody 
who  wanted  to  drink  it  was  able  to  buy  it  at  five.  The 
tobacconists  would  purchase  with  circumstances  of  great 
ostentation  one  pound  of  duty-paid  tobacco,  and  under 
cover  of  that  transaction  would  sell  twenty  pounds  which 
had  been  smuggled  over  from  Guernsey. 

The  officers  of  the  Revenue  were  overmatched  by 
sea  and  land.  Sixty  horses,  each  carrying  a  hundred- 
weight and  a  half  of  tea,  had  been  seen  traversing  Corn- 
wall in  bright  moonlight  to  supply  the  wants  of  Devon- 
shire. When  conveying  their  goods  across  country 
the  contraband  traders  did  the  law  so  much  compliment 
as  to  confine  their  operations  to  the  night ;  but  any  hour 
of  the  day  was  a  business  hour  for  the  large  Irish  wher- 
ries, (as  they  then  were  called,)  which  infested  the  Cor- 
nish coast.  A  Revenue  cutter  stationed  to  the  south  of 
Tintagel  Head  was  chased  by  one  of  these  smugglers. 
The  King's  vessel  took  refuge  in  Padstow  harbour,  and 
her  adversary  hung  out  a  flag,  and  fired  a  salvo  of  seven 
guns  in  honour  of  the  victory.  That  was  the  condition 
of  an  English  county  which  had  forty-four  representa- 
tives in  Parliament  to  look  after  its  interests  and  its  pro- 

1  Historical  Mamiscripts  Commission.      Fifteenth  Report,  Appendix, 
Part  VI.     Pp.  273  and  297  of  the  Carlisle  Papers. 
K 


130  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

pricties.  It  was  almost  pharisaical  for  Ministers,  with 
such  a  state  of  things  at  their  own  doors,  to  maintain 
that  public  morality  demanded  of  them  to  set  fleets  and 
armies  in  motion  because  the  Revenue  was  defrauded, 
and  its  officers  flouted,  in  half-settled  regions  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  Empire.1 

It  undoubtedly  was  the  case  that  in  America,  and 
most  of  all  in  New  England,  enmity  to  the  claims  of  the 
Revenue  was  active  and  universal.  The  origin  of  that 
enmity  lay  far  back  in  history.  It  has  been  observed 
by  a  writer,  who  knew  his  subject  well,  that  the  part 
which  the  merchants  and  shipowners  of  the  Northern 
colonies  played  in  the  contest  with  the  home  Govern- 
ment has  been  understated  both  as  regards  the  impor- 
tance of  their  action  and  the  breadth  and  justice  of  the 
motives  by  which  it  was  inspired.2  They  had  been  born 
into  the  inheritance  of  a  cruel  wrong,  which  was  more 
deeply  felt  as  the  forces  that  govern  trade  came  to  be 
better  understood,  and  in  some  cases  were  for  the  first 
time  discovered.  Cromwell,  with  an  insight  beyond  his 
age,  had  refused  to  swathe  and  swaddle  the  infant  com- 
merce of  America ;  and  under  the  Commonwealth  that 
commerce  grew  fast  towards  prosperous  maturity.  But 
a  Stuart  was  no  sooner  on  the  throne  than  the  British 
Parliament  entered  on  a  course  of  selfish  legislation 
which  killed  the  direct  maritime  trade  between  our  de- 
pendencies and  foreign  ports,  and  (to  borrow  the  words 
of  an  eminent  historian)  deliberately  crushed  every  form 
of  colonial  manufacture  which  could  possibly  compete 
with  the  manufactures  of  England.3 

The  traditional  resentment  against  such  injustice  kept 

1  William  Rawlins  to  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  August  26,  1765,  from 
St.  Columb.  Again,  from  the  same  to  the  same,  April  24,  1775,  from 
Padstow.  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.  Fifteenth  Report,  Ap- 
pendix, Part  I. 

2  Loyalists  of  the  American  Revolution,  by  Lorenzo  Sabine,  vol.  i.,  pp.  3 
to  14. 

8  Mr.  Lecky,  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  his  History,  treats  of  the  commer- 
cial relations  between  England  and  the  American  colonies.  Within  the 
compass  of  four  pages  he  gives  a  description  of  their  character  and  conse- 
quences which  is  clear,  full,  and  unanswerable. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  131 

alive  by  the  continuing  and  ever-increasing  material  in- 
jury which  it  inflicted,  arrayed  men  of  all  classes,  creeds, 
and  parties  in  opposition  to  the*  interests  of  the  Excheq- 
uer, and  to  the  officers  by  whom  these  interests  were 
guarded.  A  gentleman  of  New  York  says  in  a  letter 
written  shortly  after  the  American  Revolution  broke  out : 
"  I  fix  all  the  blame  of  these  proceedings  on  the  Presby- 
terians. You  would  ask  whether  no  Church  of  England 
people  were  among  them.  Yes,  there  were ;  to  their 
eternal  shame  be  it  spoken.  But  in  general  they  were 
interested  either  as  smugglers  of  tea,  or  as  being  over- 
burdened with  dry  goods  they  knew  not  how  to  pay 
for."  x  Thomas  Hancock  —  the  uncle  of  John  Hancock, 
to  whom,  oblivious  of  political  divergences,  he  left  most 
of  his  property  —  was  an  ardent  royalist  and  a  declared 
Tory.  He  was  reputed  to  be  worth  that  comfortable 
amount  of  money  which  his  contemporaries,  in  the 
phrase  used  by  Pope  and  Arbuthnot,  still  called  a  plum. 
Hancock  had  made  the  better  part  of  his  fortune  by  im- 
porting contraband  tea  from  Holland,  and  supplying  it 
to  the  mess-tables  of  the  army  and  navy.  Considering 
that  it  was  to  people  holding  his  political  opinions  that 
the  Crown  lawyers  would  resort  if  they  had  occasion  to 
pack  a  jury,  it  is  not  difficult  to  compute  their  chances 
of  securing  a  conviction  on  a  charge  of  evading  the 
Revenue.  Whenever  a  gauger  or  tide-waiter  was  found 
tripping,  the  Court-house  overflowed  in  every  quarter 
with  triumphant  emotion.  About  the  period  of  Preston's 
trial,  John  Adams  argued  a  suit  for  a  penalty  against  a 
Custom-house  officer  for  taking  greater  fees  than  those 
allowed  by  law ;  and,  in  his  own  estimation,  he  argued 
it  very  indifferently.  He  won  his  case ;  and  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  somewhat  to  his  amusement 
and  yet  more  to  his  disgust,  he  was  overwhelmed  with 
assurances  that  he  had  outdone  all  his  own  previous 
efforts,  and  would  thenceforward  rank  as  an  equal  of 
the  greatest  orator  that  ever  spoke  in  Rome  or  Athens. 

1  American  Archives,  prepared  and  published  under  authority  of  an 
Act  of  Congress.     The  letter  is  dated  May  31,  1774. 


132  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

For  ten  years  past,  ever  since  George  Grenville's 
influence  began  to  be  felt  in  the  distant  parts  of  the 
Empire,  the  claims  of  the  Revenue  had  been  enforced 
with  unwonted  rigour,  which  in  the  summer  of  177 1 
assumed  an  aggressive  and  exasperating  character. 
Sandwich,  who  had  succeeded  Hawke  at  the  Admiralty, 
had  appointed  an  officer  with  his  own  surname,  and  (as 
it  is  superfluous  to  state)  of  his  own  party,  to  command 
the  powerful  squadron  now  stationed  in  American  wa- 
ters. Admiral  Montagu,  who  came  fresh  from  hear- 
ing the  inner  mind  of  the  Bedfords  as  expressed  in  the 
confidence  of  the  punch-bowl,  was  always  ready  to  make 
known  his  opinion  of  New  England  and  its  inhabitants 
in  epithets  which,  on  a  well-ordered  man-of-war,  were 
seldom  heard  abaft  the  mast.  In  comparison  with  him, 
(so  it  was  said,)  an  American  freeholder  living  in  a  log- 
house  twenty  feet  square,  was  a  well-bred  and  polite 
man.  To  make  matters  worse,  the  Admiral's  lady  was 
as  much  too  fine  as  the  Admiral  himself  was  coarse. 
"  She  is  very  full,"  wrote  Adams,  "  of  her  remarks  at 
the  assembly  and  the  concert.  '  Can  this  lady  afford 
the  jewels  and  dresses  she  wears  ? '  '  Oh,  that  my  son 
should  come  to  dance  with  a  mantua-maker ! '  "  Be- 
tween them  they  encouraged,  in  those  officers  whom  their 
example  swayed,  a  tone  of  arrogance  and  incivility  for- 
eign indeed  to  a  noble  service.1 

The  Navy,  like  every  profession,  has  its  bad  bargains ; 
and  the  lieutenant  in  command  of  the  schooner  Gaspee, 

1  The  Admiral's  appearance  was  milder  than  his  language.  Philip 
Freneau,  in  a  satirical  Litany,  prayed  to  be  delivered 

"  From  groups  at  St.  James's,  who  slight  our  petitions, 
And  fools  that  are  waiting  for  further  submissions; 
From  a  nation  whose  manners  are  rough  and  abrupt; 
From  scoundrels  and  rascals  whom  gold  can  corrupt; 
From  pirates  sent  out  by  command  of  the  King 
To  murder  and  plunder,  but  never  to  swing; 
From  hot-headed  Moutagu,  mighty  to  swear, 
The  little  fat  man  with  his  pretty  white  hair." 

It  was  believed  in  America  that  Sandwich  and  the  Admiral  were  brothers. 
The  story,  in  that  shape,  has  gut  into  history. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE 


133 


which  was  watching  the  coast  of  Rhode  Island,  set  him- 
self to  the  task  of  translating  the  language  used  on  the 
quarter-deck  of  the  flagship  into  overt  acts.  He  stopped 
and  searched  vessels  without  adequate  pretext,  seized 
goods  illegally,  and  fired  at  the  market  boats  as  they 
entered  Newport  harbour.  He  treated  the  farmers  on 
the  islands  much  as  the  Saracens  in  the  middle  ages 
treated  the  coast  population  of  Italy,  cutting  down  their 
trees  for  fuel,  and  taking  their  sheep  when  his  crew  ran 
short  of  fresh  meat.  The  injured  parties  made  their 
voices  heard ;  and  the  case  was  laid  before  the  Admiral, 
who  approved  the  conduct  of  his  subordinate  officer,  and 
announced  that,  as  sure  as  any  people  from  Newport 
attempted  to  rescue  a  vessel,  he  would  hang  them  as 
pirates.  It  was  a  foolish  answer  as  addressed  to  men 
who  were  not  long-suffering,  nor  particular  as  to  their 
methods  of  righting  a  grievance.  The  Admiral's  allusion 
to  the  gallows,  and  possibly  the  character  of  Lieutenant 
Dudingston's  depredations,  put  them  in  mind  of  an  old 
proverb  ;  and  they  resolved  that,  if  it  came  to  a  hanging 
matter,  it  should  be  for  a  sheep,  and  not  for  a  lamb.  At 
the  first  convenient  opportunity  they  boarded  the  royal 
schooner,  set  the  crew  on  shore,  and  burned  the  vessel 
to  the  water's  edge.  A  terrible  commotion  followed. 
Thurlow,  in  his  capacity  as  Attorney-General,  denounced 
the  crime  as  of  a  deeper  dye  than  piracy,  and  reported 
that  the  whole  business  was  of  five  times  the  magnitude 
of  the  Stamp  Act.  By  a  royal  order  in  council  the 
authorities  of  Rhode  Island  were  commanded  to  deliver 
the  culprits  into  the  hands  of  the  Admiral,  with  a  view 
to  their  being  tried  in  London.  But  before  the  crew  of 
a  Providence  fishing-boat  could  be  arraigned  at  the  Old 
Bailey,  and  hanged  in  chains  in  the  Essex  marshes,  they 
had  first  to  be  got  out  of  Narragansett  Bay  ;  and  Stephen 
Hopkins,  the  old  Chief  Justice  of  Rhode  Island,  refused 
to  lend  his  sanction  to  their  arrest  in  face  of  the  destiny 
which  awaited  them.  Admiral  Montagu  himself,  right 
for  once,  acknowledged  that  British  Acts  of  Parliament 
—  at  any  rate  such  Acts  as  the  revived  statute  of  Henry 


134  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  Eighth  —  would  never  go  down  in  America  unless 
forced  by  the  point  of  the  sword.  And  the  estimable 
and  amiable  Dartmouth,  who  now  was  Secretary  of  the 
Colonies,  contrived  to  hush  up  a  difficulty  which,  as  he 
was  told  by  a  wise  and  friendly  correspondent,  if  it  had 
been  pressed  to  an  extreme  issue  "would  have  set  the 
continent  into  a  fresh  flame."  l 

It  was  too  much  to  expect  that  Sandwich  and  Thurlow 
would  sit  quiet  under  their  defeat.  There  was  no  use 
in  having  the  law,  good  or  bad,  on  their  side  if  those 
who  interpreted  and  administered  it  in  America  were 
independent  of  their  influence  and  dictation.  But  the 
members  of  that  Cabinet  were  never  slow  to  make  up  a 
prescription  for  anything  which  they  regarded  as  a  dis- 
ease in  the  body  politic  ;  and,  as  usual,  they  tried  it  first 
on  Massachusetts.  It  was  arranged  that  her  judges 
should  henceforward  have  their  salaries  paid  by  the 
Crown,  and  not  by  the  Colony.  Samuel  Adams  dis- 
cerned the  threatening  nature  of  the  proposal  itself,  and 
foresaw  all  the  perils  involved  in  the  principle  which  lay 
beneath  it.  At  his  instigation  the  patriots  of  Boston 
invited  all  the  townships  of  the  province  to  establish 
Committees  of  Correspondence  for  the  purpose  of  guard- 
ing their  chartered  rights,  and  adjured  every  legislative 
body  throughout  America  to  aid  them  in  repelling  an 
invasion  which,  if  it  succeeded  in  their  own  case,  un- 
doubtedly would  be  directed  in  turn  against  all  their 
neighbours.  Massachusetts  rose  to  the  call ;  and  the 
Assembly  of  Virginia,  with  the  political  instinct  which 
seldom  misled  it,  took  prompt  and  courageous  action. 
But  in  other  quarters  the  response  was  neither  hearty 
nor  universal.  The  spirit  which  had  defeated  the  Stamp 
Act  could  not  be  aroused  at  short  notice  and  on  a  partial 
issue ;  and  friends  and  adversaries  alike  knew  that  the 
threatened  colony,  if  things  came  to  the  worst,  must  be 
prepared  to  rely  mainly  upon  herself. 

1  Dartmouth  Correspondence,  August  29,  1772,  and  June  16,  1773. 
Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.  Fourteenth  Report,  Appendix,  Part 
X. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  1 35 

There  was,  however,  good  reason  to  doubt  whether 
the  mother-country  was  in  the  temper  to  fight  so  paltry 
a  matter  to  such  a  bitter  end.  England,  outside  Parlia- 
ment and  within  it,  was  tired  of  bullying  and  coercing 
men  who  after  all  were  Englishmen,  whose  case  rested 
on  honoured  English  precedents,  and  was  asserted  and 
maintained  by  honest  English  methods.  Never  was  a 
community,  (as  the  men  of  Massachusetts  pathetically 
complained,)  so  long  and  so  pitilessly  assailed  with 
malicious  abuse  as  theirs  had  been  during  the  past  two 
years  by  enemies  in  London  and  within  their  own  borders. 
The  reaction  now  set  in  ;  and  a  large  and  increasing  sec- 
tion of  the  English  nation  watched  with  respect,  and 
often  with  sympathy,  a  resistance  conducted  on  strict 
constitutional  lines  to  that  which,  even  as  seen  from 
England,  looked  very  like  a  deliberate  system  of  small- 
minded  and  vexatious  tyranny.  In  July,  1773,  Franklin 
addressed  a  letter  from  London  to  Thomas  Cushing, 
then  Speaker  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  "With 
regard,"  he  said,  "  to  the  sentiments  of  people  in  general 
here  concerning  America,  I  must  say  that  we  have  among 
them  many  friends  and  well-wishers.  The  Dissenters 
are  all  for  us,  and  many  of  the  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers. There  seems  to  be,  even  among  the  country 
gentlemen,  a  growing  sense  of  our  importance,  a  dis- 
approbation of  the  harsh  measures  with  which  we  have 
been  treated,  and  a  wish  that  some  means  might  be 
found  of  perfect  reconciliation." 

Under  such  circumstances  it  would  have  seemed 
impossible  that  a  Ministry  could  rise  to  such  a  height 
of  perverted  ingenuity  as  to  deliver  Massachusetts  from 
her  isolation;  to  unite  all  the  colonies  in  sudden,  hot, 
and  implacable  disaffection  towards  the  Crown ;  and  to 
drive  them  into  courses  which  would  shock  the  pride 
and  alienate  the  good-will  of  England.  But  even  that 
feat  proved  to  be  within  the  resources  of  statesmanship. 
Foremost  among  the  questions  of  the  day  at  Westmin- 
ster was  the  condition  of  the  East  India  Company, 
which  now  stood  on  the  verge  of   bankruptcy.     The 


1 3  6  THE  AMERICAN  RE  VOL  UTION 

home  Government  came  forward  handsomely  with  a 
large  loan  on  easy  terms,  and  a  pledge  not  to  insist  on 
an  annual  tribute  of  four  hundred  thousand  pounds 
which  India  had  somehow  contrived  to  pay,  in  spite  of 
her  deficits,  into  the  British  exchequer.  But,  over  and 
above  these  palliatives,  the  Cabinet  had  at  its  disposal 
the  means  of  relieving  the  famous  Corporation  from 
all  its  embarrassments.  There  lay  stored  in  the  ware- 
houses tea  and  other  Indian  goods  to  the  value  of  four 
millions,  which  had  been  in  course  of  accumulation  ever 
since  the  Company,  not  by  its  own  fault,  had  lost  a 
most  promising  customer.  The  American  colonies, 
making  a  protest  against  their  fiscal  wrongs  in  a  form 
which  had  its  attractions  for  a  thrifty  people,  had  sup- 
plied themselves  with  smuggled  tea  from  France,  Den- 
mark, Sweden,  and  especially  from  Holland ;  and  those 
foreign  merchants  who  had  been  tempted  into  the  trade 
soon  learned  to  accompany  their  consignments  of  tea 
with  other  sorts  of  Oriental  produce.  The  Custom- 
house officers  reckoned  that  Indian  goods,  which  paid 
nothing  to  the  Treasury  and  brought  no  profit  to  the 
Company,  found  their  way  into  America  to  the  amount 
of  half  a  million  in  money  every  twelvemonth. 

The  opportunity  was  golden,  and  without  alloy.  If 
Ministers  could  bring  themselves  to  adopt  the  sugges- 
tion made  by  the  East  Indian  Directors,  and  advise  a 
willing  House  of  Commons  to  repeal  the  Tea-duty,  they 
would,  by  one  and  the  same  straightforward  and  easy  I 
operation,  choke  up  the  underground  channels  along ' 
which  commerce  had  begun  to  flow,  pacify  the  colonies, 
and  save  the  East  India  Company.  The  demand  of  the 
American  market  for  tea  was  already  enormous.  The 
most  portable  and  easily  prepared  of  beverages,  it  was 
then  used  in  the  backwoods  of  the  West  as  lavishly  as 
now  in  the  Australian  bush.  In  more  settled  districts 
the  quantity  absorbed  on  all  occasions  of  ceremony  is 
incredible  to  a  generation  which  has  ceased  to  rejoice 
and  to  mourn  in  large  companies  and  at  great  cost. 
The  legislative  assembly  of  more  than  one  colony  had 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  1 37 

passed  sumptuary  laws  to  keep  the  friends  of  the  de- 
ceased from  drinking  his  widow  and  orphans  out  of 
house  and  home ;  and  whatever  the  gentlemen,  who 
drove  and  rode  into  a  funeral  from  thirty  miles  round, 
were  in  the  habit  of  drinking,  the  ladies  drank  tea.  The 
very  Indians,  in  default  of  something  stronger,  took  it 
twice  a  day ; 1  and  however  much  attached  they  might 
be  to  their  Great  Father  beyond  the  water,  it  must  not 
be  supposed  that  they  made  special  arrangements  in 
order  to  ensure  that  he  had  been  paid  his  dues  on  the 
article  which  they  consumed.  If  only  the  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer,  with  a  few  heartfelt  sentences  of 
frank  retractation  and  cordial  welcome,  had  thrown 
completely  open  the  door  of  the  Custom-house  which 
already  was  ajar,  all  would  have  been  well,  then  and 
thereafter.  Before  Parliament  was  many  sessions  older 
America,  (after  a  less  questionable  fashion  than  the 
expression,  when  used  in  an  English  budget  speech, 
usually  implies,)  would  have  drunk  the  East  India 
Company  out  of  all  its  difficulties. 

A  course  which  went  direct  to  the  right  point  was  not 
of  a  nature  to  find  favour  with  George  the  Third  and 
his  Ministers.  They  adopted  by  preference  a  plan 
under  which  the  East  India  Company  was  allowed  a 
drawback  of  the  whole  Tea-duty  then  payable  in  Eng- 
land, while  the  Exchequer  continued  to  claim  the  three- 
pence on  the  pound  which  was  paid,  (or,  to  speak  more 
exactly,  left  unpaid,)  in  America.  Their  object  was 
such  that  every  one  who  ran  a  boatload  of  smuggled 
goods  between  Penobscot  Bay  and  the  mouth  of  the 
Savannah  River  could  read.  This  wise  scheme,  (so 
Franklin  put  it,)  was  to  take  off  as  much  duty  in  Eng- 
land as  would  make  the  Company's  tea  cheaper  in 
America  than  any  which  foreigners  could  supply ;  and 
at  the  same  time  to  maintain  the  duty  in  America,  and 
thus  keep  alive  the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax  the  colo- 
nies.   "  They  have  no  idea,"  he  wrote,  "  that  any  people 

1  Dartmouth  Correspondence,  January  19,   1773. 


138  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

can  act  from  any  other  principle  but  that  of  interest ; 
and  they  believe  that  threepence  in  a  pound  of  tea,  of 
which  one  does  not  perhaps  drink  ten  pounds  in  a 
year,  is  sufficient  to  overcome  all  the  patriotism  of  an 
American." 

They  were  not  long  in  finding  out  their  mistake.  The 
King,  (so  North  stated,)  meant  to  try  the  question  with 
America ;  and  arrangements  were  accordingly  made 
which,  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  them,  undoubtedly 
accomplished  that  end.  In  the  autumn  of  1773  ships 
laden  with  tea  sailed  for  the  four  principal  ports  on  the 
Atlantic  seaboard,  and  agents  or  consignees  of  the  East 
India  Company  were  appointed  by  letter  to  attend  their 
arrival  in  each  of  the  four  towns.  The  captain  of  the 
vessel  despatched  to  Philadelphia  found  such  a  reception 
awaiting  him  that  he  sailed  straight  back  to  England. 
Boston  gratified  the  curiosity  of  an  energetic  patriot 
who  expressed  a  wish  to  see  whether  tea  could  be  made 
with  salt  water.  At  Charlestown  the  cargo  was  deposited 
in  a  damp  cellar,  where  it  was  spoiled  as  effectually  as 
if  it  had  been  floating  on  the  tide  up  and  down  the 
channel  between  James  Island  and  Sullivan's  Island. 
And,  when  New  York  learned  that  the  tea-ships  allotted 
to  it  had  been  driven  by  a  gale  off  the  coast,  men  scanned 
the  horizon,  like  the  garrison  of  Londonderry  watching 
for  the  English  fleet  in  Lough  Foyle,  in  their  fear  lest 
fate  should  rob  them  of  their  opportunity  of  proving 
themselves  not  inferior  in  mettle  to  the  Bostonians. 
The  great  cities,  to  which  all  the  colonies  looked  as 
laboratories  of  public  opinion  and  theatres  of  political 
action,  had  now  deliberately  committed  themselves  to  a 
policy  of  illegal  violence  which  could  not  fail  to  wound 
the  self-respect  of  the  English  people,  and  make  Par- 
liament, for  many  a  long  and  sad  year  to  come,  an 
obedient  instrument  in  the  hands  of  men  resolved  at 
all  hazards  to  chastise  and  humble  America. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE     STATE     OF    POLITICAL     PARTIES     AT    WESTMINSTER. 
FRANKLIN    AND   THE    LETTERS 

The  news  from  Boston  came  upon  the  mother-country 
in  the  provoking  shape  of  a  disagreeable  surprise.  For 
the  ordinary  English  citizen  it  was  news  indeed.  He 
had  heard  how  at  Philadelphia,  on  the  4th  of  June, 
1766,  —  the  first  King's  birthday  which  followed  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  —  the  healths  of  George  the 
Third  and  Doctor  Franklin  had  been  drunk  in  public 
at  the  same  table.  From  that  moment  he  had  reposed 
in  a  serene  conviction  that  the  American  difficulty,  for 
his  own  lifetime  at  all  events,  was  over  and  done  with. 
He  took  it  for  granted  that  the  mob  in  New  England 
was  in  the  habit  of  hunting  Custom-house  officers,  just  as 
a  Londoner,  in  the  days  before  railroads,  lived  in  the 
belief  that  the  mob  in  the  manufacturing  districts  of 
Lancashire  was  always  breaking  frames.  He  was  aware 
that  the  troops  had  shot  some  townspeople  in  the  streets 
of  Boston.  He  was  equally  aware  that,  not  many  months 
before,  the  Footguards  had  shot  some  Wilkites  in  the 
Borough  of  Southwark ;  and  the  one  occurrence  had  to 
his  mind  no  deeper  and  more  permanent  significance 
than  the  other.  The  last  serious  fact  connected  with 
America  which  had  come  to  his  knowledge  was  that 
Parliament  had  gone  a  great  deal  more  than  half  way 
to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  colonies,  had  removed  all  but 
a  mere  fraction  of  the  unpopular  duties,  and  had  made 
an  arrangement  with  the  East  India  Company  by  which 
the  colonists  would  thenceforward  drink  tea  much 
cheaper  than  he  could  drink  it  himself.     And  now,  as 

139 


I40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

a  recognition  of  her  patience  and  self-control,  and  as  a 
reply  to  her  friendly  advances,  England  was  slapped 
in  her  smiling  face  with  a  zest  and  vigour  which  sent  a 
thrill  of  exultation  through  all,  in  any  quarter  of  the 
world,  who  envied  her  and  wished  her  ill.  It  was  true 
that  close  and  dispassionate  investigation  would  show 
that,  for  the  treatment  which  she  had  received,  she  had 
herself,  or  rather  her  chosen  governors,  to  thank.  But 
the  first  effect  of  an  insult  is  not  to  set  Englishmen 
computing  and  weighing  what  they  have  done  to  deserve 
it ;  and  the  national  indignation,  in  heat  and  unanimity, 
hardly  fell  short  of  that  which  was  in  our  own  time 
aroused  throughout  the  Northern  States  of  America  by 
the  bombardment  of  Fort  Sumter. 

The  country  was  in  a  temper  for  any  folly  which 
its  rulers  would  allow  it  to  commit ;  and  unfortunately 
the  crisis  had  come  just  when  the  system  of  personal 
government  had  reached  the  culminating  point  of  suc- 
cess towards  which  the  King  had  long  been  working. 
Every  particle  of  independence,  and  of  wisdom  which 
dared  to  assert  itself,  had  at  last  been  effectually  elim- 
inated from  the  Cabinet.  Administrative  experience 
was  to  be  found  there,  and  some  forethought  and  cir- 
cumspection, and  plenty  of  timidity;  but  those  Ministers 
who  were  afraid  of  strong  courses  stood  in  much  greater 
terror  of  their  strong  monarch.  The  men  who  in  March, 
1770,  had  pronounced  themselves  against  the  retention 
of  the  Tea-duty  were  no  longer  in  a  position  to  warn  or 
to  advise  him.  The  Duke  of  Grafton,  after  the  humili- 
ating defeat  which  on  that  occasion  he  suffered,  lost  no 
time  in  surrendering  to  Lord  North  the  first  place  in  the 
Government.  He  consented  indeed,  at  the  instance  of 
the  King,  to  keep  the  Privy  Seal.  But  he  consulted  his 
own  dignity  by  refusing  to  sit  as  a  subordinate  in  a 
Cabinet  which,  while  he  was  still  Prime  Minister,  had 
overruled  him  in  the  case  of  a  decision  second  in  impor- 
tance to  none  which  any  Cabinet  was  ever  called  on  to 
take. 

Conway  and  Sir   Edward   Hawke  had  retired  from 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  141 

office ;  and  Granby  had  met,  in  mournful  fashion,  death 
which  he  had  gaily  confronted  on  many  a  disputed  field. 
Though  four  generations  have  come  and  gone,  an  English 
reader  learns  with  something  of  a  personal  shock  that 
there  was  a  dark  side  to  that  brilliant  career.  Posterity 
remembers  him  as  the  Master-General  of  the  Ordnance, 
and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army,  whom  no  officer 
envied ;  the  statesman  whom  every  ally  and  every  oppo- 
nent loved ;  the  leader  of  horse  who  was  named  with 
Ziethen  and  Seidlitz  in  all  the  cavalry  barracks  of 
Europe ;  the  idol  of  the  people  in  days  when  the  people 
seldom  troubled  themselves  to  distinguish  between  one 
politician  and  another.  But,  with  all  this,  Granby  be- 
hind the  scenes  was  an  erring,  an  over-burdened,  and  at 
last  a  most  unhappy  man.  He  was  a  jovial  companion 
to  high  and  humble ;  a  profuse  and  often  unwise  bene- 
factor ;  a  soldier  of  the  camp  in  foreign  lands,  with  little 
time  and  less  inclination  to  look  closely  into  his  private 
affairs  at  home ;  and,  above  all,  an  elderly  heir-apparent 
to  an  immense  estate ;  — and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he 
had  the  faults  of  his  qualities  and  of  his  position.  Like 
some  greater  men,  and  with  more  excuse,  at  fifty  years 
of  age  he  had  a  broken  constitution,  and  he  was  deep  in 
debt.  None  the  less,  at  the  bidding  of  duty,  he  resisted 
the  entreaties  of  George  the  Third,  who  was  sincerely 
desirous  not  to  lose  him  from  the  Ministry.  Resigning 
his  employments  and  emoluments,  he  retired  into  pecun- 
iary embarrassment  unrelieved  by  occupation  and  un- 
cheered  by  health.  A  year  afterwards  he  died  at  Scar- 
borough, where  he  had  gone  in  the  hope  of  a  cure,  only 
to  find  himself  involved  in  the  worry  and  tumult  of  a 
contested  Yorkshire  election.  "You  are  no  stranger," 
a  friend  of  the  family  writes,  "  to  the  spirit  of  procrasti- 
nation. The  noblest  mind  that  ever  existed,  the  amiable 
man  whom  we  lament,  was  not  free  from  it.  I  have  lived 
to  see  the  first  heir,  of  a  subject,  in  the  Kingdom,  lead  a 
miserable  shifting  life,  attended  by  a  levee  of  duns,  and 
at  last  die  broken-hearted,  —  for  so  he  really  was,  — 
rather  than  say,  '  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father.'      It 


142  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

is  impossible  to  describe  the  distress  of  the  whole  coun- 
try. Every  place  you  passed  through  in  tears,  and  the 
Castle  was  the  head-quarters  of  misery  and  dejection. 
The  Duke  rose  up  to  meet  me  with  an  appearance  of 
cheerfulness,  but  soon  relapsed  into  a  sullen  melancholy, 
and  for  three  weeks  he  appeared  to  me  petrified."  * 

The  departure  of  Conway,  Hawke,  and  Granby,  three 
men  of  the  sword  who  feared  nothing  except  an  unright- 
eous quarrel,  left  the  honour  of  England  in  the  keeping 
of  the  Bedfords.  For  them  it  must  be  said  that,  when 
urging  their  views  in  council,  they  had  all  the  advantage 
which  proceeds  from  sincerity  of  conviction.  Their  ideas 
of  ministerial  discretion  permitted  them,  whether  sober, 
drunk,  or  half-seas  over,  to  rail  at  the  colonists  as  rebels 
and  traitors  before  any  company  in  London  ;  and  it  may 
well  be  believed  that  they  did  not  pick  their  words  within 
the  walls  of  that  chamber  where  they  had  a  right  to  speak 
their  entire  mind  in  as  plain  terms  at  their  colleagues 
would  endure.  What  is  known  about  the  tractability 
of  those  colleagues  is  among  the  miracles  of  history ; 
though  the  full  extent  of  it  can  only  be  conjectured  by  a 
comparison  of  the  partial  revelations  which  have  seen 
the  light  of  day.  In  1779  Lord  North  confessed  to  the 
King  that  for  at  least  three  years  he  had  held  in  his 
heart  the  opinion  that  the  system  which  the  Government 
had  pursued  would  end  in  the  ruin  of  his  Majesty  and 
the  country.  Yet  during  three  more  years  he  continued 
to  pursue  that  system,  and  would  never  have  desisted 

1  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.  Twelfth  Report,  Appendix,  Part 
V.  The  letter  is  in  sad  contrast  with  another  in  the  same  volume  written 
nine  years  before  to  Granby,  then  a  recalcitrant  invalid,  by  Lord  Ligonier, 
—  one  of  the  few  men  who  had  a  right  to  criticise  or  to  compliment  him. 
"  I  am  to  thank  you  for  the  remedy  you  have  discovered  for  a  fever.  It 
has  ever  been  unknown  till  your  time;  but  now  it  is  manifest  that  if  a  man 
is  ordered  to  his  bed  with  this  disorder,  he  has  nothing  more  to  do  than  to 
jump  out  of  it,  get  upon  his  horse,  and  fight  away.  But  however  prevailing 
that  remedy  has  been  on  a  late  occasion,  I  do  not  recommend  it  for  the 
future."  Such  a  message  from  such  a  soldier  was  a  feather  in  the  hat  even 
of  Granby,  —  if  those  who  know  his  portraits  can  imagine  him  with  any 
covering  to  his  head.  He  had  just  come  victorious  out  of  the  last  and 
fiercest  of  his  German  battles. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER         1 43 

from  it  if  Washington  had  not  been  too  strong  for  him 
abroad,  and  Charles  Fox  and  his  friends  too  many  for 
him  at  home.  Lord  Gower,  the  President  of  the  Council, 
supported  in  public  North's  policy,  although  he  loved  it 
no  better  than  did  North  himself ;  but  five  years  so  spent 
were  enough  for  him,  and  at  the  end  of  that  period  he 
appeased  his  conscience  by  a  resignation  which,  for  a 
member  of  that  Ministry,  may  be  called  prompt  and  even 
premature.  Strangest  of  all  was  the  letter  in  which  Lord 
Barrington,  before  ever  a  cannon  had  been  fired  or  a 
sabre  stained,  had  laid  down  in  black  and  white  his  in- 
ward judgment  on  what  had  been  the  origin  of  the  dis- 
pute, and  on  what  should  be  the  conduct  of  the  war. 
He  argued  that  it  was  madness  on  the  part  of  any 
Ministry  to  impose  a  tax  which  no  Ministry  had  the 
strength  to  levy ;  that  the  attempt  to  fight  the  colonists 
on  land  could  only  result  in  disaster  and  disgrace ;  that 
a  judicious  employment  of  our  naval  force  was  the  least 
unpromising  method  of  combating  the  rebellion ;  and 
that,  so  far  from  reinforcing  the  army  in  Massachusetts, 
the  garrison  should  at  once  be  withdrawn  from  Boston, 
leaving  that  undutiful  city  to  its  own  devices.  Those 
were  his  views,  deliberately  entertained  and  never  aban- 
doned ;  and  nevertheless  as  Secretary  at  War  he  de- 
spatched to  America  every  soldier  who  fought  between 
the  day  of  Bunker's  Hill  and  the  day  of  Monmouth 
Court  House. 

The  theory  of  ministerial  responsibility  which  then 
prevailed  in  high  official  circles  was  carefully  laid  down 
by  Lord  Barrington's  brother,  the  Bishop  of  Durham, 
in  a  passage  of  biography  agreeably  redolent  of  fraternal 
pride.  "In  conjunction,"  the  Bishop  wrote,  "with  the 
other  members  of  Administration,  Lord  Barrington  bore 
the  censures  which  were  now  very  generally  directed 
against  the  supporters  of  the  American  War :  yet  no 
person  less  deserved  those  censures.  There  is  the  clear- 
est and  most  decisive  evidence  that  Lord  Barrington  dis- 
approved the  adopted  mode  of  coercion,  and  that  he  sub- 
mitted, both  to  the  King  and  his  Ministers,  his  sentiments 


144  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

on  the  subject  in  the  most  unequivocal  terms.  His  opim 
ion  was  that,  though  it  became  his  duty  to  remonstrate 
with  his  colleagues  in  office,  it  was  neither  honourable 
nor  proper  for  him  to  appeal  to  the  uninformed  judg- 
ments of  others,  and  to  play  a  game  of  popularity  at  the 
expense  of  the  public." 

The  colleague  to  whom  Lord  Barrington  more  particu- 
larly addressed  his  remonstrances  was  Lord  Dartmouth, 
the  Secretary  of  State  in  charge  of  America.  His  selec- 
tion for  that  post  had  been  an  act  of  true  wisdom.  With 
an  empire  such  as  ours,  a  judicious  ruler,  who  has  an 
appointment  to  make,  takes  due  account  of  local  tastes 
and  preferences.  He  will  natter  one  colony  by  sending 
to  it  as  governor  a  public  man  who  is  supposed  to  have 
studied  agriculture,  and  will  please  another  by  appoint- 
ing a  nobleman  who  undoubtedly  understands  horses. 
Bringing  the  same  knowledge  of  mankind  into  higher 
regions,  George  the  Third  and  Lord  North  paid  America 
a  marked  and  acceptable  compliment  when  they  com- 
mitted the  care  of  her  interests  to  the  most  distinguished 
member  of  a  school  of  thought  and  practice  which  was 
already  beginning  to  be  called  Evangelical. 

The  fame  of  Lord  Dartmouth  had  been  carried  far 
and  wide  throughout  the  English-speaking  world  by  that 
association  of  ^rave  and  sincere  men  who  were  in  hard 
conflict  with  the  vices  of  the  age,  and  in  earnest  protest 
against  the  lukewarmness  of  its  religious  faith.  He  was 
a  Churchman  ;  and  the  claims  of  the  Establishment  were 
in  small  favour  with  the  colonists.  But  he  belonged 
to  that  section  of  Churchmen  who  looked  outside,  as 
well  as  within,  their  own  borders  for  allies  to  aid  them 
in  their  lifelong  warfare  against  ignorance  and  indiffer- 
ence, misery,  cruelty,  and  sin.  Lord  Halifax,  accounted 
a  rake  and  spendthrift  even  by  that  lax  generation,  had 
gone  as  far  as  he  dared,  and  much  farther  than  was  safe, 
into  a  scheme  for  planting  bishops  in  America.  But 
Dartmouth,  the  light  of  whose  goodness  would  have 
shone  in  the  brightest  days  of  Christianity,  recognised 
only  one  spiritual  banner  beneath  which  men  should  fight, 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT   WESTMINSTER         145 

and  cared  little  or  nothing  to  what  regiment  belonged  the 
arm  that  sustained  it,  if  only  it  was  carried  worthily.  He 
had  long  ago  applied  himself  to  the  sage  and  praise- 
worthy task  of  turning  to  account  the  spirit  of  enthusiasm 
which  had  grown  strong  within  the  Church  itself,  under 
the  fostering  care  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield.  Those  emi- 
nent men  had  been  encountered  by  a  persecution,  not 
discouraged  by  Church  dignitaries,  and  in  the  coarser 
and  more  cruel  forms  of  which  a  beneficed  clergyman  was 
too  often  the  ringleader.  But  by  the  year  1764  that 
persecution  had  done  its  worst,  and  in  vain.  The  heat  of 
the  day  was  already  borne,  and  the  Methodists  had  ob- 
tained a  standing  so  secure  that  their  self-respect  allowed 
them  to  offer  terms.  Wesley  addressed  to  fifty  ministers 
of  the  Establishment,  who  held  the  same  essential  doc- 
trines as  himself,  a  singularly  skilful  and  beautiful  letter ; 
and  that  appeal  for  mutual  good-will  and  united  effort 
had,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  been  prepared  years 
beforehand  under  the  eye  of  Lord  Dartmouth.  When 
the  attempt  at  reconciliation  failed,  Wesley  wrote  to  his 
noble  coadjutor  in  the  style  which  he  sometimes  employed 
when  he  was  not  pleased ;  but  Dartmouth  had  no  notion 
of  throwing  away  such  a  friendship  on  account  of  a  few 
frank  and  rough  words.  "  Have  you  a  person,"  asked 
Wesley,  "in  all  England  who  speaks  to  y<*ur  lordship  so 
plain  and  downright  as  I  do ;  who  considers  not  the 
peer,  but  the  man ;  who  rarely  commends,  but  often 
blames,  and  perhaps  would  do  it  oftener  if  you  desired 
it  ? "  More  than  once,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  course  of 
this  narrative,  Wesley  made  good  his  promise  at  a  time 
when  honest  advice  was  of  priceless  value. 

Dartmouth  assisted  Lady  Huntingdon  with  his  means 
and  influence,  and  the  still  more  needed  contribution  of 
his  sound  sense  and  knowledge  of  the  world,  in  her  en- 
deavours to  provide  English  pulpits  with  a  supply  of 
preachers  who  believed  what  they  said,  and  were  trained 
in  the  art  of  saying  it.  He  found  a  wiser  and  not  less 
open-handed  auxiliary  in  John  Thornton,  the  true  founder 
of  the  Evangelicalism  which  was  prevalent  and  promi- 


146  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

nent  in  the  Established  Church  during  the  period  when 
that  Church  took  a  forward  part  in  courageous  and  un- 
popular movements  for  the  general  benefit  of  mankind. 
The  two  friends  quietly  and  steadily  applied  themselves 
to  mend  the  income  of  poor  livings  held  by  good  men,  to 
purchase  advowsons,  and  to  confer  them  upon  clergy- 
men who  expounded  the  Gospel  as  they  themselves  had 
learned  it.  While  pursuing  this  work  they  had  the  rare 
privilege  of  establishing  a  permanent  claim  on  the  grati- 
tude of  very  many  who  have  little  sympathy  with  their 
specific  creed.  Lord  Dartmouth  made  interest  in  high 
episcopal  quarters  to  obtain  the  ordination  of  John 
Newton,  who  was  too  much  in  earnest  about  religion 
to  be  readily  entrusted  with  a  commission  to  teach  it, 
except  as  a  matter  of  favour  to  a  great  man.  The  states- 
man placed  the  divine  in  the  curacy  of  Olney;  and  Mr. 
Thornton  added  an  allowance  of  two  hundred  pounds  a 
year.  "  Be  hospitable,"  he  wrote  to  Newton,  "  and  keep 
an  open  house  for  such  as  are  worthy  of  entertainment. 
Help  the  poor  and  needy."  That  roof  soon  sheltered 
a  guest  than  whom  few  had  been  worthier  of  entertain- 
ment since  Abraham's  tent  was  pitched  on  the  plains  of 
Mamre,  and  none  had  been  more  in  need  of  it  since  this 
world  began.  For  William  Cowper  spent  the  period  of 
gloom  and  depression  which  fell  upon  him  in  middle 
life  under  Newton's  care,  and  as  a  member  of  his  family. 
It  was  at  Dartmouth's  cost  that  the  house  had  been 
fitted  and  furnished,  and  decorated  in  a  manner  to  suit 
the  taste  of  the  inmates.1     And  to  Dartmouth  Newton 

1  "  We  have  daily  new  reason  to  thank  your  Lordship  for  our  dwelling. 
On  looking  over  the  bills  I  observe  that  in  some  less  essential  articles  there 
might  have  been  a  sparing.  In  the  article  of  painting  we  pleased  ourselves 
with  mahogany  doors,  without  being  in  the  least  aware  that  colour  was 
dearer  than  white  or  brown.  There  is  one  line  perhaps  would  surprise 
your  Lordship,  namely,  for  160  letters  in  the  study,  6.?.  8d.  This  being  no 
great  sum,  and  out  of  the  common  road,  I  did  not  intend  should  appear  in 
the  bill.  But  perhaps  you  will  allow  me  to  explain  it.  If  your  Lordship 
had  been  at  the  Plantations  in  or  about  the  year  1746,  and  was  now  to 
come  to  Olney,  you  would  be  sensible  of  an  amazing  difference  between 
my  situation  there,  and  what  it  is  here.  I  therefore  ordered  the  following 
texts  to  be  painted  over  the  fireplace  ;  — '  Since  thou  wast  precious  in  my 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT   WESTMINSTER  1 47 

made  periodical  reports  of  his  friend's  condition  in 
phraseology  now  long  out  of  date,  but  alive  with  senti- 
ments of  tenderness  and  delicacy  which  were  to  the 
honour  of  him  who  wrote  and  him  who  read. 

Dartmouth  loved  to  hear  from  one  or  another  of  the 
two  friends  how  much  they  were  enjoying  the  comforts 
which  they  owed  him ;  strolling  in  his  woods,  and  mend- 
ing their  fare  from  his  ponds,  while  at  Whitehall,  sixty 
miles  away,  he  himself  was  fishing  in  very  troubled 
waters.  It  was  a  relief  to  turn  from  the  bullyings  of 
the  Bedfords,  or  from  poor  Lord  Barrington's  plaintive 
confidences,  and  to  refresh  his  mind  with  the  current 
news  of  a  community  which,  quite  apart  from  the  Un- 
wins,  must  certainly  have  been  the  most  innocent  of  vil- 
lages. "The  simplicity  and  happy  ignorance,"  Newton 
wrote,  "  of  those  who  live  in  a  country  place  is  a  great 
advantage  to  a  minister.  A  few  months  ago  I  heard 
that  some  of  them  in  their  prayers  at  home  had  been 
much  engaged  for  the  welfare  of  Mr.  Wilkes.  As  the 
whole  town  of  Olney  is  remarkably  loyal  and  peaceable 
with  regard  to  the  government,  I  was  rather  surprised 
that  gentleman  should  have  partisans  amongst  our 
serious  people.  Upon  inquiry  I  found  they  had  just 
heard  of  his  name  and  that  he  was  in  prison.  Compar- 
ing the  imperfect  account  they  had  of  him  with  what 
they  read  in  their  Bibles,  they  took  it  for  granted  that  a 
person  so  treated  must  of  necessity  be  a  minister  of  the 
Gospel,  and  under  that  character  they  prayed  earnestly 
that  he  might  be  supported  and  enlarged.  Mr.  Cowper 
desires  his  respects.  It  was  agreed  between  us  that 
whoever  wrote  first  should  let  your  Lordship  know  that 
Mr.  Cowper's  servant  can  throw  a  casting  net,  that  we 
love  fish  at  both  houses,  and  that,  relying  on  your  Lord- 


sight,  thou  hast  been  honourable;  but  thou  shalt  remember  that  thou  wast 
a  bondsman  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  the  Lord  thy  God  redeemed  thee.' " 
This  was  the  house  in  which  Cowper  resided  during  the  height  of  his 
malady.  Before  and  afterwards,  the  two  families  lived  separately.  The 
extracts  from  Newton's  letters  are  from  the  Fifteenth  Report  of  the  His- 
torical Manuscripts  Commission,  Appendix,  Part  I. 


148  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ship's  goodness,  we  have  sometimes  thought  of  employ- 
ing the  servant  to  catch  us  some  if  he  can." 

In  one  of  his  first  letters  Newton  expressed  anxiety 
concerning  the  lady  who  holds  high  place  among  the 
Sisters  of  Mercy  of  literature.  "  My  amiable  guests  are 
at  present  from  home.  Mr.  Cowper  has  accompanied 
Mrs.  Unwin  this  morning  to  St.  Albans  to  consult  Dr. 
Cotton.  Her  frame  is  exceedingly  delicate,  and  she  has 
a  variety  of  symptoms  which  seem  to  threaten  a  con- 
sumption. The  most  alarming  symptom  to  me  (if  I  may 
dare  to  call  it  so)  is  her  eminence  in  the  Christian  life 
and  spirit.  Her  temper,  her  language,  her  very  air, 
seem  to  indicate  an  unusual  meetness  for  glory."  The 
danger  of  a  calamity,  which  many  would  still  lament, 
passed  away;  and  for  Mrs.  Unwin  and  her  charge 
there  ensued  some  years  of  occasional  happiness  and 
only  too  constant  occupation.  Sir  Cowper,  as  he  was 
styled  by  humbler  neighbours  who  had  not  studied  the 
baronetage,  but  who  knew  a  gentleman  when  they  saw 
him,  was  employed  under  Newton's  direction  on  religious 
teaching  and  visiting;  —  the  very  last  work  to  which  his 
attention  should  have  been  directed.  Cowper's  health 
gave  way ;  and  about  the  time  that  Dartmouth's  Amer- 
ican difficulties  began  in  earnest  he  received  tidings 
which  affected  him  even  more  than  the  Non-importation 
Agreement,  or  the  burning  of  the  schooner  Gaspee. 
"  He  is  now  sitting  by  me,  disconsolate.  Lately  he 
rejoiced  in  communion  with  God,  and  lived  upon  the 
foretaste  of  eternal  glory.  I  believe  few  people  living 
have  given  more  unquestionable  evidence  of  a  heart 
truly  devoted  to  God  than  my  friend,  yet  he  is  now 
upon  the  brink  of  despair,  and  our  most  earnest  endeav- 
ours to  comfort  him  seem  but  to  add  to  his  distress. 
How  often  have  I  been  ready  to  complain  and  say, 
1  Why  does  the  Lord  deal  so  heavily  with  a  favoured 
and  faithful  servant  ? '  Mr.  Cowper  was  (as  I  verily 
believe)  the  foremost  of  us  all.  His  whole  behaviour 
was  not  only  unblamable  but  exemplary.  Two  circum- 
stances in  his  case,  for  which  we  cannot  be  sufficiently 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT   WESTMINSTER  149 

thankful,  I  must  not  omit.  The  one  is  the  great  patience 
and  mildness  of  spirit  which  the  Lord  maintains  in  him  ; 
the  other,  that  all  his  troubles  and  terrors  are  restrained 
when  he  goes  to  bed,  so  that  he  generally  sleeps  eight 
hours  or  more  every  night  as  undisturbed  as  a  child." 
As  soon  as  a  favourable  change  came,  after  many  weary 
months,  Dartmouth  was  the  first  to  be  informed  that  the 
Lord  was  on  his  way  to  turn  mourning  into  joy.  The 
patient  awoke,  to  find  his  shelves  bare  of  the  books 
which,  in  his  time  of  poverty,  he  had  been  compelled  to 
sell.  Dartmouth's  library  then  supplied  him  with  the 
volumes  of  travel  over  the  study  of  which  his  mind 
regained  its  strength,  and  acquired  a  cheerfulness  that 
endured  long  enough  to  depict  itself  for  our  delight  in 
indelible  colours  before  it  once  again  was  finally 
clouded. 

Cowper,  and  Newton,  and  Lady  Huntingdon,  and 
the  Wesleys  were  Church  people,  or  tried  stoutly  to  be 
accounted  so.  But  Dartmouth's  breadth  of  charity  and 
ardour  of  conviction  were  bounded  by  no  ecclesiastical 
barriers.  In  this  respect  he  was  in  full  sympathy  with 
his  friend  John  Thornton,  who  to  the  end  of  his  travel- 
ling days  never  enjoyed  an  excursion  to  the  mountains 
or  the  sea-coast  unless  he  was  accompanied  by  some 
Nonconformist  minister  who  wanted,  but  could  not  afford, 
a  holiday.  Already,  long  before  official  position  had 
made  it  worth  his  while  to  court  popularity  in  the 
colonies,  the  peer  had  taken  most  effective  interest  in 
a  school  established  on  the  New  Hampshire  frontier  for 
the  conversion  and  civilisation  of  the  Indians :  a  school 
which,  as  time  went  on  and  his  benefaction  multiplied, 
received  the  name  of  Dartmouth  College.  In  1771  he 
invited  the  co-operation  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  and 
received  a  reply  of  a  nature  which  goes  further  to 
illustrate  the  inward  causes  of  the  American  troubles 
than  many  ponderous  volumes  of  minutes  and  reports. 
The  Bishop  (so  the  answer  ran)  had  received  no  intima- 
tion that  the  head  of  the  college  was  to  belong  to  the 
Church  of  England,  or  that  the  prayers  to  be  used  were 


150  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

those  of  the  Liturgy.  The  other  members  of  the  Board, 
his  Lordship  further  remarked,  appeared  to  be  Dis- 
senters, and  he  therefore  could  not  see  how  a  bishop 
could  be  of  use  among  them,  and  accordingly  begged 
to  decline  the  honour  which  the  trustees  had  done  him. 
Dartmouth — well  aware  that  a  religious  undertaking  in 
New  England,  if  Dissenters  were  kept  in  the  background, 
could  not  be  expected  to  overflow  with  vitality  —  con- 
tinued President  of  the  Board.  John  Thornton  acted  as 
Treasurer :  a  function  which,  with  his  usual  generosity, 
he  took  care  should  never  be  a  sinecure. 

The  colonists  saw  that  Dartmouth  understood  their 
ways,  and  was  at  one  with  them  on  matters  which  he 
regarded  as  infinitely  higher  and  more  important  than 
any  political  differences.  Whether  he  was  in  or  out 
of  office,  —  when  he  was  advocating  their  cause,  and 
when,  in  obedience  to  worse  and  stronger  men  than 
himself,  he  was  doing  his  utmost  to  ruin  it,  —  they  per- 
sisted in  looking  on  him  as  a  friend  at  heart.  Vir- 
ginia and  New  York  addressed  to  him  their  felicitations 
on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  accompanied,  among 
other  less  romantic  presents,  by  a  young  eaglet ;  at 
whose  full-grown  claws  and  beak,  in  coming  years,  he 
must  have  looked  with  mingled  feelings  when  he  paid 
a  visit  to  his  aviary.  On  the  occasion  of  the  Boston 
massacre  of  March,  1770,  the  popular  leaders  trans- 
mitted to  Dartmouth  a  full  account  of  their  proceed- 
ings, as  to  an  honest  man  who  would  take  care  that 
their  statement  of  the  case  should  be  known  at  Court. 
When,  in  August,  1772,  he  was  appointed  Secretary 
of  the  Colonies,  the  news  was  hailed  with  satisfaction 
throughout  America  by  people  of  all  parties,  and  indeed 
of  every  colour.  The  effusions  of  joy  and  expectation 
which  his  advent  to  power  excited  began  with  a  con- 
gratulatory ode  from  a  negress,  the  last  couplet  of 
which,  for  the  sentiment  if  not  for  the  rhyme,  might 
have   passed   muster  in   Cowper's   "Table-talk."1     As 

1  Thou,  like  the  Prophet,  find  the  bright  abode 
Where  dwells  thy  sire,  the  Everlasting  God. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  15 1 

months  rolled  on,  and  the  plot  thickened,  every  post 
brought  him  more  valuable  testimonies  of  affection  and 
confidence  in  the  shape  of  letters  of  counsel  from  the 
most  unlikely  quarters.  Good  men,  even  from  among 
the  ranks  of  those  whom  he  never  without  a  twinge 
could  call  rebels,  dared  to  write  him  their  true  thoughts, 
and  cared  to  do  it.  When  he  allowed  himself  to  be- 
come the  instrument  of  an  hostility  which  was  foreign 
to  his  nature,  and,  it  is  to  be  feared,  not  consonant  with 
his  opinions,  they  diminished  something  from  their  re- 
spect, but  he  always  retained  their  love.  Two  genera- 
tions afterwards,  in  the  July  of  1829,  the  citizens  of 
New  York  asked  leave  to  detain  his  portrait,  then  on 
its  way  from  England  to  the  College  which  bore  his 
name.  The  request  was  granted  ;  and  they  placed  the 
picture  in  their  Hall  of  Justice,  next  those  of  Washing- 
ton and  Franklin,  on  the  day  of  the  Celebration  of  Inde- 
pendence. If  Dartmouth  could  have  ruled  the  colonies 
according  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  judgment  and  his 
own  conscience,  that  Independence  would  have  been 
postponed  till  he  had  ceased  to  be  Secretary  of  State  ; 
and,  whenever  it  arrived,  it  would  have  excited  very 
different  feelings  and  recollections  from  those  with  which 
it  was  destined  to  be  associated. 

With  all  who  were  prudent  in  the  Ministry  cowed 
and  silent,  and  its  reckless  members  dominant  and  noisy, 
the  nation,  at  this  supreme  moment,  was  likely  to  be 
ill  piloted.  Its  best  hope  lay  in  those  statesmen  out  of 
office  whose  vocation  was  to  restrain  it  from  the  mad 
courses  towards  which  its  rulers  were  hurrying  it.  More 
often  than  appears  on  the  face  of  history,  a  Cabinet  has 
been  saved  from  the  full  consequences  of  its  own  policy 
by  an  opposition  which  did  not  shrink  from  the  labour 
and  odium  of  preventing  the  men  in  power  from  effect- 
ing all  the  mischief  upon  which  their  minds  were  set. 
But  such  a  task,  the  most  invidious  which  can  fall  within 
the  sphere  of  public  duty,  requires  something  more  for 
its  successful  performance  than  patriotic  impulses  and 


152  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

good  intentions.  Unfortunately  those  honourable  and 
seemly  political  commodities  now  constituted  nearly  the 
whole  stock  in  trade  of  the  peers  and  county  mem- 
bers who  watched  and  criticised  the  Government.  As 
Ministers,  eight  years  before,  they  had  done  their  duty 
faithfully  and  well  during  the  brief  period  which  elapsed 
between  the  moment  when  the  King  had  no  choice  but 
to  accept  their  services,  and  the  moment  when  he  first 
could  find  a  pretext  for  dispensing  with  them.  Burke's 
"  Short  Account  of  a  Short  Administration  "  set  forth, 
with  the  unadorned  fidelity  of  an  inventory,  the  catalogue 
of  performances  which  Lord  Rockingham  and  his  col- 
leagues had  packed  into  the  compass  of  one  year  and 
twenty  days.  In  tastes,  in  character,  and  in  worldly  posi- 
tion these  men  were  suited  to  use  power  well,  and  to 
abandon  it  cheerfully  as  soon  as  they  were  unable  any 
longer  to  employ  it  for  the  advantage  of  the  country. 
But  they  were  not  equally  inclined  to  conduct,  year  in  and 
year  out,  the  thankless  and  hopeless  battle  against  able 
and  unscrupulous  opponents  who  were  fighting  like  irri- 
tated bulldogs  in  defence  of  their  salaries.  For  true 
gentlemen,  and  such  the  Rockinghams  were,  the  pros- 
pect before  them  was  not  enticing.  The  best  they 
could  anticipate  was  to  spend  years  in  being  bantered 
by  Rigby,  and  brow-beaten  by  Thurlow,  and  denounced 
as  traitors  by  Wedderburn  for  expressing  in  mild  terms 
their  sympathy  with  a  cause  which  in  former  days  he 
had  almost  contrived  to  bring  into  disrepute  by  the 
violence  with  which  he  had  advocated  it.  And  at  the 
end  of  those  years  they  might,  as  the  crown  of  success, 
be  able  to  force  themselves  into  the  counsels  of  a  mon- 
arch who  hated  them,  and  who  treated  them  as  none 
among  them  would  have  treated  the  humblest  of  their 
dependents  and  retainers. 

The  Whig  magnates,  while  they  had  little  to  gain 
from  a  political  career,  had  in  their  own  opinion  almost 
everything  to  lose.  In  that  age  of  enjoyment  they  had 
the  best  seats  in  the  -theatre  of  life ;  and  their  notions 
of  pleasure  squared  even  less  than  those  of  most  men 


POLITICAL   PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  1 53 

with  the  conditions  under  which  hard  public  work  is 
done.  There  were  politicians  for  whom  the  sweetest 
hours  of  the  twenty-four  began  when  the  rattle  of  the 
coaches  up  St.  James's  Street  told  that  the  House  of 
Commons  was  no  longer  sitting,  and  ended  when  they 
were  helped  into  their  beds  by  daylight ;  —  in  whose 
eyes  Ranelagh  surpassed  all  the  gardens  of  Chats- 
worth,  and  the  trees  in  the  Mall  were  more  excellent 
than  the  elms  at  Althorp  or  the  oaks  of  Welbeck.  But 
Rockingham  and  his  followers  loved  the  country ;  and 
there  were  few  amongst  them  who  did  not  possess 
plenty  of  it  to  love.  Assembling  for  business  in  a 
November  fog,  and  wrangling  on  until  a  June  sun 
shone  reproachfully  through  the  windows,  seemed  a 
doubtful  form  of  happiness  even  to  Gibbon,  whose  con- 
ceptions of  rustic  solitude  did  not  go  beyond  a  cottage 
at  Hampton  Court  during  the  summer  months.  But  to 
haunt  London  when  the  thorns  were  red  and  white  and 
the  syringas  fragrant,  or  when  the  hounds  were  running 
over  the  Yorkshire  pastures  and  the  woodcocks  were 
gathering  in  the  Norfolk  spinneys ;  to  debate  amidst 
clamour,  and  vote  in  a  lobby  where  there  was  hardly 
space  to  stand,  with  the  hope  that  at  some  unknown 
point  in  the  future  he  might  draw  salary  for  a  few 
quarter  days,  —  was  not  a  career  to  the  mind  of  a  great 
landowner  who  seldom  got  as  much  sport  and  fresh  air 
as  he  could  wish,  and  who,  since  he  had  outgrown  the 
temptations  of  the  card-table,  had  never  known  what  it 
was  to  spend  half  his  income. 

In  the  spring  of  1774  the  Opposition  retained  very 
little  hold  on  Parliament,  and  still  less  on  the  country. 
Their  impotence  was  the  constant  theme  of  every  one 
who  was  their  well-wisher,  and  who  would  have  been 
their  supporter  if  they  had  provided  him  with  anything 
to  support.  Their  supine  attitude  was  noticed  with  de- 
light and  exultation  in  the  private  letters  of  their  adver- 
saries, who  were  however  far  too  judicious  to  taunt  them 
with  it  in  public ;  and  among  themselves  it  formed  an 
unfailing  subject  of  mutual  confession  and  expostulation. 


154  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

For  years  together,  both  before  and  after  the  outbreak 
of  the  American  War,  the  comments  of  Londoners  who 
kept  their  friends  at  a  distance  informed  of  what  was 
doing  at  Westminster  are  all  in  the  same  strain.  "  I 
wish  I  could  send  you  some  news,"  wrote  Lord  Town- 
shend  in  1772,  "  but  all  is  dull  and  the  town  thin.  The 
Opposition,  poor  souls  who  can  do  no  harm,  (the  Dukes 
of  Richmond,  Devonshire,  and  Portland  excepted,)  seem 
to  have  left  the  nation  entirely  to  this  wicked  Ministry." 
"Lord  North,"  said  Sir  George  Macartney  in  1773, 
"  has  had  a  wonderful  tide  of  success,  and  there  does 
not  seem  anything  likely  to  interrupt  it.  Opposition 
is  growing  ridiculous  and  contemptible,  and  'tis  now 
said  that  after  this  Session  Lord  Rockingham  will  give 
it  up." 

The  colonial  difficulty,  instead  of  bracing  the  sinews 
of  the  Opposition,  only  made  them  more  conscious  of 
their  own  helplessness.  The  Duke  of  Richmond,  who 
was  the  fighting  man  of  the  party  in  the  Lords,  admitted 
in  March,  1775,  that  he  felt  very  languid  about  the 
American  business,  that  he  saw  no  use  in  renewing 
efforts  which  invariably  failed,  and  that  in  his  view 
nothing  would  restore  common  sense  to  the  country 
except  the  dreadful  consequences  which  must  follow 
from  what  he  called  the  diabolical  policy  on  which  it 
was  embarked.  Samuel  Curwen,  a  Tory  exile  who  had 
fled  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean  in  what  may  be  described 
as  the  First  Emigration,  kept  a  close  watch  on  the  pro- 
ceedings at  Westminster.  He  comforted  the  fellow- 
loyalists,  whom  he  had  left  behind  him  in  the  clutches 
of  the  Sons  of  Liberty,  with  assurances  that  the  Oppo- 
sition in  the  British  Parliament  was  too  inconsiderable 
in  numbers,  influence,  and  activity  to  hinder  the  plans 
of  the  Administration  for  restoring  order  in  New  Eng- 
land.1 Horace  Walpole,  an  honest  and  anxious  patriot 
beneath  all  his  fashionable  gossip  and  antiquarian  frip- 
pery, thus  wound  up  a  long  series  of  passages  reflecting 

1  .Samuel  Curwen  to  the  Hon.  William  Browne  of  Boston.  London, 
December  4,  1775. 


POLITICAL   PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  1 55 

on  the  degeneracy  of  the  party  which  professed  to  with- 
stand the  Court.  "  I  would  lay  a  wager  that  if  a  parcel 
of  schoolboys  were  to  play  at  politicians,  the  children 
that  should  take  the  part  of  the  opposition  would  dis- 
cover more  spirit  and  sense.  The  cruelest  thing  that 
has  been  said  of  the  Americans  by  the  Court  is  that 
they  were  encouraged  by  the  Opposition.  You  might 
as  soon  light  a  fire  with  a  wet  dishclout."  The  com- 
plaint was  uttered  in  October,  1777,  and  it  was  the  last 
of  the  number.  In  the  November  of  the  same  year 
Charles  Fox  openly,  visibly,  and  definitively  assumed  the 
lead  of  the  Whigs  in  the  House  of  Commons  ;  and  from 
that  moment  onwards,  whatever  other  charge  might  be 
brought  against  the  Opposition,  no  man  ever  spoke  of 
their  apathy  again. 

Epithet  for  epithet,  the  retrospective  loyalty  due  from 
Liberals  to  a  former  chief  of  their  party  would  incline 
them  to  compare  Lord  Rockingham  to  a  nobler  article 
of  domestic  use  than  that  which  suggested  itself  to  Hor- 
ace Walpole;  but  a  wet  blanket  he  certainly  must  be 
called.  He  was  the  most  exalted  instance  in  Parlia- 
mentary history  of  the  force  of  Burke's  maxim  that  a 
habit  of  not  speaking  at  all  grows  upon  men  as  fast  as 
a  habit  of  speaking  ill,  and  is  as  great  a  misfortune. 
To  the  end  of  his  days,  whenever  Rockingham  had 
mustered  courage  to  open  his  mouth  in  public,  he  was 
congratulated  as  if  he  had  been  a  young  county  mem- 
ber who  had  moved  the  Address,  without  breaking 
down,  on  the  first  day  of  his  first  Parliament.  "  It  gave 
me  great  pleasure,"  wrote  the  Duke  of  Richmond  in 
1769,  "  to  hear  that  you  had  exerted  yourself  to  speak 
in  the  House ;  and  I  am  particularly  pleased  that  you 
returned  to  the  charge  on  the  second  day,  and  replied : 
for  it  gives  me  hopes  that  you  will  get  rid  of  that  ill- 
placed  timidity  which  has  hitherto  checked  you.  Be 
assured,  you  cannot  speak  too  often.  Practice  will 
make  it  easy  to  you."  It  was  a  curious  way  of  writing 
to  a  man  who  had  already  been  Prime  Minister. 

If  in  the  Lords  the  Opposition  had  a  leader  whose 


156  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

heart  sank  within  him  whenever  he  gave  the  word  of 
command,  the  Opposition  in  the  Commons  had  to  do  as 
they  best  could  without  any  leader  whatsoever.  They 
came  to  the  House,  as  Burke  ruefully  expressed  it,  to 
dispute  among  themselves,  to  divert  the  Ministry,  and 
to  divide  eight  and  twenty.  There  was  indeed  always 
Burke,  who  during  a  quarter  of  a  century  adorned  and 
illustrated  the  cause  of  freedom ;  and  who,  when  in  his 
declining  years  he  exerted  his  eloquence  against  the 
French  Revolution,  led  or  rather  drove  the  House  of 
Commons  and  the  Government,  and  the  country  too. 
But  his  merits  and  his  failings  alike  disqualified  him  to 
be  the  titular  head  of  one  of  the  great  parties  in  the 
fastidious  and  aristocratic  parliaments  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  He  had  some  of  the  faults  of  his  time,  and 
some  of  the  defects  which  were  then  imputed  to  his 
place  of  birth.  He  wanted  self-control  in  debate,  and 
he  seldom  observed  a  sense  of  proportion  either  in  the 
length  of  his  speeches,  or  in  the  size  and  colour  of  his 
rhetorical  figures.  There  are  passages  in  Burke,  rich 
to  gaudiness  and  audacious  almost  to  crudity,  which  are 
equally  astonishing  when  we  reflect  that  a  human  im- 
agination was  capable  of  producing  them  without  pre- 
vious study,  and  when  we  remember  that  they  were 
spoken,  in  the  actual  words  which  we  now  read,  to  a 
House  of  Commons  waiting  for  its  dinner  or  (more 
inconceivable  still)  to  a  House  of  Commons  that  had 
dined.1  He  lived  beyond  his  means,  and  was  far  too 
much  in  the  company  of  relatives  who  were  not  particu- 
lar as  to  the  methods  by  which  they  endeavoured  to  fill 

1  In  1770,  when  arguing  for  an  inquiry  into  the  administration  of  the 
law  of  libel,  Burke  thus  expressed  his  want  of  confidence  in  the  Judges : 
"The  lightning  has  pierced  their  sanctuary,  and  rent  the  veil  of  their 
temple  from  the  top  even  to  the  bottom.  Nothing  is  whole,  nothing  is 
sound.  The  ten  tables  of  the  law  are  shattered  and  splintered.  The  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  is  lost,  and  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  uncircumcised. 
Both  they  and  ye  are  become  an  abomination  unto  the  Lord.  In  order  to 
wash  away  your  sins,  let  Moses  and  the  prophets  ascend  Mount  Sinai,  and 
bring  us  down  the  second  table  of  the  law  in  thunders  and  lightnings;  for 
in  thunders  and  lightnings  the  constitution  was  first,  and  must  now,  be 
established." 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT   WESTMINSTER  1 57 

their  empty  purses.  But  that  circumstance  in  itself  was 
no  bar  to  the  favour  of  an  Assembly  where  the  receipt 
for  mending  an  impaired  fortune  was  to  sell  votes  for 
allotments  in  government  loans  and  for  shares  in  gov- 
ernment contracts.  The  unpardonable  sin  of  Edmund 
Burke  was  that  he  owed  his  position  in  the  political 
world  to  nothing  except  his  industry  and  his  genius. 

He  knew  his  place ;  and  if  he  ever  forgot  it,  there 
were  those  at  hand  who  made  it  a  matter  of  conscience 
to  deal  with  him  faithfully.  He  left  among  his  papers 
a  noble  composition  which,  if  it  had  been  a  fifth  of  the 
length  that  it  is,  would  have  been  as  widely  admired  as 
Dr.  Johnson's  reply  to  Lord  Chesterfield.  It  was  the 
draft  answer  to  a  letter  from  Dr.  Markham,  the  Bishop 
of  Chester,  and  tutor  to  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Markham 
was  known  during  his  life,  and  is  still  remembered,  for 
having  almost  contrived  to  make  sycophancy  one  of  the 
fine  arts.  His  reverence  for  those  whom  the  poets 
of  the  eighteenth  century  called  "  the  Great "  was  in 
marked  contrast  to  his  treatment  of  one  who  was  great 
for  all  time.  In  1764  Markham  entreated  the  Duke  of 
Bedford  to  procure  him  "one  of  the  inferior  bishoprics." 
"  Whatever  preferment,"  the  Reverend  Doctor  wrote, 
"  I  may  chance  to  rise  to,  I  shall  not  set  a  higher  value 
on  any  of  its  emoluments  than  on  the  ability  it  may 
possibly  give  me  of  being  useful  to  some  of  your  Grace's 
friends."  His  style  was  very  different  when  he  saw 
occasion  to  address  Edmund  Burke.  Even  at  this  dis- 
tance of  time  it  is  impossible  to  read  without  indigna- 
tion the  terms  in  which  a  pompous  formalist,  who  had 
begged  and  bargained  himself  into  a  great  position, 
ventured  to  upbraid  an  exalted  thinker,  who  had  missed 
wealth  and  prosperity,  for  his  presumption  in  express- 
ing an  opinion  on  matters  which  were  too  high  for  him 
and  on  people  of  a  station  above  his  own.  The  Church- 
man expressed  surprise  that  the  member  of  Parliament 
resented  the  advice  to  bring  down  the  aim  of  his  ambi- 
tion to  a  lower  level,  and  reminded  him  that  arrogance 
in  a  man  ■  of   his   condition  was   intolerable.     Burke's 


158  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

conduct  was  ridiculous  folly,  and  his  house  a  hole  of 
adders ;  and,  being  what  he  was,  he  had  the  insolence 
to  ill-treat  the  first  men  of  the  kingdom;  —  those  first 
men  being  Rigby  and  Lord  Barrington,  whose  names 
are  now  chiefly  remembered  because  they  occasionally 
appear  to  disadvantage  in  a  corner  of  one  of  his  scath- 
ing sentences.  It  was  not  a  question,  the  Bishop  said, 
of  what  pretensions  his  correspondent  might  have,  but 
of  what  claims  the  world  would  choose  to  allow  him. 

"  My  Lord,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  think  very  poorly  of 
Ned  Burke  or  his  pretensions ;  but,  by  the  blessing  of 
God,  the  just  claims  of  active  members  of  Parliament 
shall  never  be  lowered  in  the  estimation  of  mankind  by 
my  personal  or  official  insignificance.  The  dignity  of 
the  House  shall  not  be  sunk  by  my  coming  into  it.  At 
the  same  time,  my  Lord,  I  shall  keep  free  from  pre- 
sumption. If  ever  things  should  entitle  me  to  look  for 
office,  it  is  my  friends  who  must  discover  the  place  I 
hold  in  Parliament.  I  shall  never  explain  it.  I  protest 
most  solemnly  that,  in  my  eye,  thinking  as  I  do  of  the 
intrinsic  dignity  of  a  member  of  Parliament,  I  should 
look  upon  the  highest  office  the  subject  could  aspire  to 
as  an  object  rather  of  humiliation  than  of  pride.  It 
would  very  much  arrange  me  in  point  of  convenience. 
It  would  do  nothing  for  me  in  point  of  honour." 

Burke  needed  no  candid  friend  to  bid  him  take  a 
lower  seat.  The  iron  had  entered  into  his  soul,  never 
to  leave  it ;  and,  far  from  aspiring  to  the  first  place,  he 
was  well  aware  that  he  could  not  afford  even  to  be  con- 
spicuous. "  I  saw  and  spoke  to  several,"  he  writes  on 
one  occasion.  "  Possibly  I  might  have  done  service  to 
the  cause,  but  I  did  none  to  myself.  This  method  of 
going  hither  and  thither,  and  agitating  things  person- 
ally, when  it  is  not  done  in  chief,  lowers  the  estimation 
of  whoever  is  engaged  in  such  transactions ;  especially 
as  they  judge  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  a  man's 
intentions  are  pure  in  proportion  to  his  languor  in  en- 
deavouring to  carry  them  into  execution."  x     So  deeply 

1  Burke  to  Rockingham,  January  10,  1773. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  1 59 

impressed  was  he  with  the  preponderating  influence 
which  birth  and  rank  then  exercised  in  the  transactions 
of  politics  that  he  seriously  thought  of  inviting  Lord 
George  Germaine  to  marshal  and  command  the  party. 
At  a  very  early  moment  however  it  became  evident  that, 
for  people  who  wanted  to  be  taken  under  fire,  it  was  not 
enough  to  get  Lord  George  Germaine  into  the  saddle. 
A  division  in  Parliament  answers  to  a  charge  in  the 
field,  and  Lord  George  had  as  little  eye  or  heart  for  the 
one  as  for  the  other.  It  soon  got  to  Burke's  saying 
plainly  and  bluntly  that,  whether  his  Lordship  concurred 
or  not,  no  human  consideration  would  hinder  himself, 
for  one,  from  dividing  the  House ;  and  the  paths  of  the 
two  men  thenceforward  finally  diverged.  The  noble- 
man took  the  road  which  led  to  place,  and  salary,  and  a 
perceptible  addition  to  the  heavy  account  which  already 
stood  against  him  in  a  ledger  of  Britain's  glory.  The 
commoner  returned  to  his  continuous  and  at  length  vic- 
torious wrestle  with  corruption  in  high  places,  and  to 
his  honourable  and  indispensable  but  obscure  labours 
behind  the  scenes  of  the  senatorial  theatre. 

"Burke,"  said  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  "you  have 
more  merit  than  any  man  in  keeping  us  together  ;  "  and 
none  knew  better  than  his  Grace  how  hard  the  task 
was.  The  exertions  of  the  great  orator  were  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  Chamber  in  which  he  himself 
sate.  He  counted  the  peers  as  a  part  of  the  flock  which 
he  tended  with  so  small  a  prospective  share  in  the 
profits,  and  so  exclusive  a  monopoly  of  the  toil  and  the 
anxiety.  He  wrote  their  Protests  ;  he  drew  their  Resolu- 
tions ;  he  told  them  when  they  were  to  speak,  and 
sketched,  not  always  in  outline,  what  they  were  to  say. 
From  Rockingham  downwards  he  urged  on  them  the 
duty  of  attendance  at  Westminster,  putting  aside  the 
plea  of  weak  health  with  decorous  but  ambiguous  in- 
credulity. His  desk  was  full  of  pathetic  epistles  in 
which  the  fathers  of  the  Whig  party,  in  both  Houses, 
begged  to  be  allowed  a  little  longer  holiday  from  the 
public  debates,  and  (what  in  that  season  of  discourage- 


l6o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ment  and  depression  they  liked  even  less)  from  the 
private  consultations  of  the  party.  "  Indeed,  Burke," 
wrote  the  Duke  of  Richmond  from  Goodwood,  "you 
are  too  unreasonable  to  desire  me  to  be  in  town  some 
time  before  the  meeting  of  Parliament.  You  see  how 
very  desperate  I  think  the  game  is.  You  know  how 
little  weight  my  opinion  is  of  with  our  friends  in  the 
lump  ;  and  to  what  purpose  can  I  then  meet  them  ?  No ; 
let  me  enjoy  myself  here  till  the  meeting,  and  then  at 
your  desire  I  will  go  to  town  and  look  about  me  for 
a  few  days."  Even  Savile  stopped  at  home,  for  reasons 
sufficiently  elevated  and  disinterested  to  have  commended 
themselves  to  John  Hampden,  but  which  none  the  less 
kept  him  out  of  the  way  when  he  was  most  wanted. 
Lord  John  Cavendish,  never  good  at  excuses,  was  re- 
duced to  admit  that  he  stayed  in  the  country  to  hunt ; 
and  Burke's  sentiment  with  regard  to  him  was  divided 
between  respect  for  his  frankness,  and  regret  for  the 
absence  of  the  keenest  politician  in  a  family  group  who 
required  no  watching  or  stimulating  when  once  he  had 
collected  them  in  London. 

The  state  of  things  was  described  by  Mason  in  a 
satire  written  just  before  the  change  for  the  better 
came. 

For,  know,  poor  Opposition  wants  a  head. 
With  hound  and  horn  her  truant  schoolboys  roam 
And  for  a  fox-chase  quit  Saint  Stephen's  dome, 
Forgetful  of  their  grandsire  Nimrod's  plan, 
"  A  mighty  hunter,  but  his  prey  was  man." 

Even  in  his  rebukes  Mason  drew  a  distinction,  creditable 
to  the  Rockinghams,  between  their  favourite  pursuits 
and  the  recreations  in  vogue  among  their  political 
adversaries,  who,  according  to  the  poet, 

At  crowded  Almack's  nightly  bet, 

To  stretch  their  own  beyond  the  nation's  debt. 

A  few  months  after  the  lines  appeared  the  Opposition 
was  no  longer  headless.     They  had  found  a  chief  in 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  l6l 

Charles  Fox,  and  Charles  Fox  soon  cured  them  of 
laziness.  Already  as  much  the  heaviest  of  heavy 
weights  as  Lord  John  Cavendish  was  light  among  the 
lightest,  it  was  from  Almack's  rather  than  from  the 
hunting-field  that  the  leader  came  whose  exhortations 
and  example  kept  bench  and  lobby  packed  with  an 
animated,  a  devoted,  and  an  ever-increasing  throng  of 
followers  throughout  all  the  closing  sessions  of  the 
great  dispute. 

The  Whigs  defended  themselves  to  each  other,  and, 
when  they  dared,  tried  to  pacify  their  taskmaster  by  the 
allegation  that  public  action  was  useless  in  the  House 
because  public  feeling  was  asleep  in  the  country.  But 
this,  as  Burke  did  not  hesitate  to  inform  them,  was  their 
own  fault.  They  were  selfishly  indifferent  about  what 
he  regarded  as  a  statesman's  primary  function,  that  of 
instructing  the  people  to  discern  and  pursue  their  own 
highest  interests.  When  it  was  a  question  of  prevent- 
ing a  rival  family  from  securing  the  representation  of 
the  shire  in  which  he  lived,  any  one  of  them  was  ready 
to  spend  his  last  guinea  ;  to  mortgage  his  home-farm  ;  to 
cut  down  his  avenue  ;  to  rise  from  a  sick  bed,  (like  poor 
Granby,)  in  order  to  vote,  and  canvass,  and  dine  in  a 
stuffy  tavern,  at  an  unheard-of  hour,  in  a  company  with 
whom  outside  politics  he  had  not  a  taste  in  common. 
And  yet  the  same  man  would  take  no  trouble,  and  sacri- 
fice none  of  his  leisure,  in  order  to  teach  his  countrymen 
what  they  ought  to  think  about  their  own  grievances, 
and  the  dangers  and  duties  of  the  nation.  If  the  Oppo- 
sition, so  Burke  told  them,  were  to  electioneer  with  the 
same  want  of  spirit  as  they  displayed  over  the  advocacy 
of  those  great  principles  which  were  the  end  and  object 
for  which  elections  exist,  there  would  not  be  a  Whig 
member  left  in  Yorkshire  or  in  Derbyshire.  "  The  peo- 
ple," he  wrote,  "  are  not  answerable  for  their  present 
supine  acquiescence  :  indeed  they  are  not.  God  and  nat- 
ure never  made  them  to  think  or  act  without  guidance 
and  direction." 

But  guidance  was  impossible  when  the  guides  them- 

M 


1 62  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

selves  were  uncertain  about  the  quarter  towards  which 
they  should  advance  and,  in  any  case,  were  in  no  hurry 
to  start.  As  far  as  the  supply  of  public  questions  was 
concerned,  the  party  was  living  from  hand  to  mouth, 
and  fared  very  sparingly.  Wilkes,  if  it  is  not  profane 
to  say  so,  had  in  his  day  been  nothing  short  of  a  god- 
send; and,  to  do  them  justice,  the  Whigs  had  made  the 
most  of  him.1  But  by  this  time  the  country  was  tired  of 
Wilkes,  and  Wilkes  was  still  more  heartily  tired  of  him- 
self as  a  public  character  and  an  idol  for  popular  enthu- 
siasm. One  fruitful  lesson  might  have  been  drawn 
from  the  story  of  the  Middlesex  election;  and  that  it 
remained  unlearned  was  in  a  large  degree  Burke's  own 
doing.  The  features  of  that  scandalous  and  sordid 
struggle ;  —  the  majority,  docile  themselves,  and  inso- 
lently intolerant  of  free  speech  in  others ;  the  aspect  of 
Lord  Clive  walking  about  with  the  consciences  of  ten 
senators  in  his  pocket,  and  of  forty  Scotch  members  vot- 
ing like  one  as  the  Court  bade  them ;  —  turned  the 
attention  of  a  few  thoughtful  politicians  towards  the 
remedy  of  Parliamentary  Reform.  Several  Whig  states- 
men had  pet  schemes  of  their  own.  But  whenever  they 
showed  any  disposition  to  agree  upon  a  plan,  and  to 
array  themselves  in  support  of  it,  Burke  threw  himself 
across  their  path  as  an  opponent ;  and,  like  the  conquer- 
ing brigade  at  Albuera,  his  dreadful  volleys  swept  away 
the  head  of  every  formation.  It  was  useless  for  Savile 
to  recommend  the  shortening  of  parliaments,  or  for  Rich- 
mond to  suggest  the  extension  of  the  franchise.  As 
soon  as  their  proposals  had  taken  shape  and  attracted 
notice,  Burke  appealed  to  all  sober  thinkers  to  say 
whether  England  was  not  the  happiest  of  communities 
in  its  exemption  from  the  horrible  disorders  of  frequent 
elections ;   and  whether  it  would   not  be  more  in  the 

1  "The  people  were  very  much  and  very  generally  touched  with  the 
question  on  Middlesex.  We  never  had,  and  we  never  shall  have,  a  matter 
every  way  so  well  calculated  to  engage  them.  The  scantiness  of  the 
ground  makes  it  the  more  necessary  to  cultivate  it  with  vigour  and  dili- 
gence, else  the  rule  of  exiguum  colito  will  neither  be  good  farming,  nor 
good  politics."  —  Burke  to  Lord  Rockingham,  September  8,  1770. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  163 

spirit  of  our  constitution,  and  more  agreeable  to  the  pat- 
tern of  our  best  laws,  rather  to  lessen  the  number,  and 
so  add  to  the  weight  and  independency  of  our  voters. 

At  last  the  Whigs  were  confronted  by  a  question 
which  aroused  them  as  their  forefathers  were  stirred  by 
the  imposition  of  Ship-money.  It  became  known  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  meditated  a  bill  laying  a  tax  of  two 
shillings  in  the  pound  on  the  estates  of  absentee  land- 
owners ;  that  the  Irish  Government,  in  sore  straits  for 
funds,  would  assist  the  measure  to  become  law ;  and 
that  the  English  Government  was  prepared  to  accept  it 
if  it  was  carried  in  Ireland.  The  rich  Whig  proprietors 
were  deeply  moved;  and  on  this  occasion  they  showed 
no  want  of  vigour  and  alacrity.  They  addressed  to 
the  Prime  Minister  a  memorial  praying  that  the  Privy 
Council  would  refuse  to  pass  the  bill ;  and  no  abler  and 
more  artful  state-paper  had  been  signed  by  the  great 
names  of  the  party  since  the  invitation  to  William  of 
Orange.  The  letter  to  Lord  North  was  even  better 
worded  than  that  historical  document  of  the  past,  for 
Burke  drew  it  up  ;  and  it  was  not  less  sincerely  felt  by 
those  who  set  their  hands  to  it.  But  all  the  considera- 
tions put  forth  in  condensed  and  formidable  array  by 
the  most  skilful  of  Irish  pens,  employed  on  a  strange 
office,  will  not  avail  against  a  couple  of  sentences  which 
described  the  attitude  of  the  first  among  living  English- 
men. "I  could  not,"  said  Chatham,  "as  a  peer  of  Eng- 
land, advise  the  King  to  reject  a  tax  sent  over  here  as 
the  genuine  desire  of  the  Commons  of  Ireland,  acting  in 
their  proper  and  peculiar  sphere,  and  exercising  their  in- 
herent exclusive  right,  by  raising  supplies  in  the  manner 
they  judge  best.  This  great  principle  of  the  constitution 
is  so  fundamental  and  with  me  so  sacred  and  indispensa- 
ble, that  it  outweighs  all  other  considerations."  In  the 
end,  the  proposal  was  defeated  in  the  Irish  Parliament. 
The  noblemen  who  had  broad  acres  in  both  countries 
commanded  a  greater  influence  in  Dublin  even  than 
that  which  they  exercised  at  Westminster.  The  Irish 
Ministry,  who  by  this  time  had  learned  that  the  King, 


1 64  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

for  once  agreeing  with  the  Rockinghams,  had  con- 
demned the  tax  as  "very  objectionable,"1  fought  to  lose, 
and  with  some  difficulty  got  themselves  beaten  by  a  nar- 
row majority.  But,  narrow  as  it  was,  it  saved  the  Whigs 
from  the  calamity  of  a  debate  in  the  British  Parliament ; 
a  prospect  which  Savile  contemplated  with  the  repug- 
nance of  a  sensible  man  who  had  no  fancy  for  losing 
his  sleep  in  a  cause  so  damaging  to  his  party.  Little 
credit,  he  wrote  to  Rockingham,  was  to  be  obtained  out 
of  a  question  in  which  it  was  notorious  that  they  were 
all  personally  interested.  "  Having  a  day  of  it,  as  the 
phrase  is,  will  not  get  us  much  laurels.  I  am  sure  hav- 
ing a  night  of  it  will  be  worse  to  me  than  a  land-tax." 

The  exhibition  to  which  Savile  looked  forward  with 
just  apprehension  was  happily  averted ;  but  none  the 
less  the  Whigs  were  out  of  touch  with  the  country,  out 
of  heart  with  their  parliamentary  work,  and  of  small 
account  among  a  class  whose  adhesion  in  sufficient 
numbers  no  party,  which  looks  to  office,  can  afford  to 
lose.  Pushing  men,  whose  prime  object  is  to  make  their 
way  in  life,  whether  they  aspire  to  be  Lord  Chancellors 
or  tide-waiters,  are  apt  to  grow  cool  in  their  loyalty,  and 
(after  a  more  or  less  decent  interval)  hot  in  their  antago- 
nism, to  statesmen  who  cannot  fight  their  own  battles. 
Philip  Francis  was  only  one  of  thousands  who,  to  em- 
ploy his  own  words,  had  seen  plainly  that  "  no  solid 
advantage  would  come  from  connection  with  a  party 
which  had  almost  all  the  wit,  and  popularity,  and  abili- 
ties in  the  kingdom  to  support  them,  but  never  could 
carry  a  question  in  either  House  of  Parliament."  Eng- 
land had  seldom  been  in  a  worse  case.  The  tornado 
was  approaching  fast,  and,  according  to  Horace  Walpole, 
her  public  men  were  at  their  wit's  end ;  which,  he  added, 
was  no  long  journey.  There  were  some,  he  said,  who 
still  put  their  faith  in  Lord  Chatham's  crutch,  as  a  wand 
which  might  wave  the  darkness  and  the  demons  away 
together;    though  his  Lordship,  in  Walpole's  opinion, 

1  The  King  to  Lord  North,  November  23,  1773. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  AT    WESTMINSTER  165 

was  better  at  raising  a  storm  than  at  laying  one.  But 
it  was  natural  enough  that  men  should  turn  in  their 
despair  to  the  imposing  figure  of  the  old  magician,  who 
had  made  the  name  of  their  country  supreme  abroad, 
and  who  had  always  stood  for  freedom  and  justice  when- 
ever and  wherever  they  were  in  peril.  Chatham  had 
broadened  and  ennobled  the  discussion  of  the  Middlesex 
election.  He  had  surveyed  the  problem  of  the  Absentee 
Tax  from  the  point  01  view  of  a  true  statesman.  He 
had  watched  the  growing  greatness  of  the  American 
colonies  with  an  affectionate  pride  which  he  of  all  men 
had  a  right  to  feel.  For  years  past  he  had  been  in 
favour  of  Parliamentary  Reform.  "Allow  a  speculator 
in  a  great  chair,"  he  wrote  in  1771,  "to  add  that  a  plan 
for  more  equal  representation,  by  additional  knights  of 
the  shire,  seems  highly  reasonable." 

However  much,  in  his  habitual  strain  of  stately  hu- 
mility, Chatham  might  affect  to  disparage  his  own 
importance,  he  was  far  removed  from  the  modern  notion 
of  an  arm-chair  politician;  for,  when  he  felt  strongly, 
he  was  still  ready  to  place  himself  where  hard  blows 
were  being  taken  and  given.  But  years  had  begun  to 
tell  upon  him,  and  when  the  occasion  came  he  was  no 
longer  certain  of  being  equal  to  his  former  self.  Joseph 
Cradock,  a  man  with  means  and  connections,  and  some 
tincture  of  letters,  gives  in  his  Memoirs  an  account  of  a 
scene  which  indicates  that  Lord  Chatham  could  not 
always  at  will  reach  the  level  which  had  been  without 
difficulty  maintained  by  William  Pitt.  On  a  day  when 
the  King  opened  Parliament,  while  Wilkes  was  in  his 
zenith,  a  mob  broke  into  the  passage  leading  to  the 
throne,  and  there  was  crowding,  and  something  like 
rioting,  at  the  very  door  of  the  House  of  Lords.  "  Lord 
Carlisle,"  said  Cradock,  "  seeing  my  distress,  most  kindly 
recognised  me,  and  made  room  for  me  between  himself 
and  another  nobleman.  That  nobleman  got  up  to  speak; 
and  then  I  perceived  that  it  was  the  great  Lord  Chatham, 
whom  I  had  never  seen  but  as  Mr.  Pitt.  He  spoke  only 
for  a  short  time,  was  confused,  and  seemed  greatly  dis- 


1 66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

concerted;  and  then,  suddenly  turning  to  me,  asked 
whether  I  had  ever  heard  him  speak  before.  '  Not  in 
this  House,  my  Lord,'  was  my  reply.  '  In  no  House, 
Sir,'  says  he,  '  I  hope,  have  I  ever  so  disgraced  myself. 
1  feel  ill,  and  I  have  been  alarmed  and  annoyed  this 
morning  before  I  arrived.  I  scarce  know  what  I  have 
been  talking  about.'  "  Later  on  in  the  debate  a  peer 
made  an  uncomplimentary  reference  to  Chatham.  "  He 
suddenly  arose,  and  poured  forth  a  torrent  of  eloquence 
that  utterly  astonished.  The  change  was  inconceivable; 
the  fire  had  been  kindled,  and  we  were  all  electrified 
with  his  energy  and  excellence.  At  length  he  seemed 
quite  exhausted,  and,  as  he  sat  down,  with  great  frank- 
ness shook  me  by  the  hand,  and  seemed  personally  to 
recollect  me,  and  I  then  ventured  to  say,  '  I  hope  your 
Lordship  is  satisfied.'  '  Yes,  Sir,'  replied  he,  with  a 
smile,  '  I  think  I  have  now  redeemed  my  credit.' ' 

Lord  Chatham's  health  was  worse  than  fitful,  and  he 
sate  in  the  wrong  House  of  Parliament  for  forming  and 
leading  a  national  party.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that 
the  only  existing  nucleus  for  such  a  party  was  the  group 
which  owned  allegiance  to  Lord  Rockingham ;  and 
against  Rockingham  and  his  associates  Chatham  was 
bitterly  prejudiced.  He  taught  himself  to  believe  that 
his  quarrel  with  them  was  on  account  of  their  modera- 
tion :  a  fault  which,  if  he  had  cared  to  take  them  in  the 
right  way,  he  would  have  been  the  very  man  to  cure. 
But  instead  of  trying  to  infuse  into  them  the  fire  and 
resolution  which  they  lacked,  his  mind  was  bent  on  out- 
bidding and  discrediting  them.  "  I  am  resolved,"  he 
said,  "to  be  in  earnest  for  the  public,  and  shall  be  a 
scare-crow  of  violence  to  the  gentle  warblers  of  the 
grove,  the  moderate  Whigs  and  temperate  statesmen." 
That  was  not  the  tone  which  Charles  Fox,  as  fierce  a 
fighter  as  Chatham  himself  had  been  in  his  most  strenu- 
ous days,  adopted  towards  men  whose  abilities  and  virt- 
ues he  respected,  and  whose  inertness  and  unconcern 
were  soon  exchanged  for  very  opposite  qualities  when 
once  he  had  filled  them  with  his  own  spirit. 


FRANKLIN  AND    THE  LETTERS  167 

There  was  one  man  who  possessed  the  talents,  the 
turn  of  character,  the  official  position,  and  the  intimate 
personal  acquaintance  both  with  England  and  America 
which  qualified  him  to  be  mediator  between  the  public 
opinion  of  the  two  countries ;  and  he  had  all  the  will  in 
the  world  to  perform  the  office.  Out  of  the  last  seven- 
teen years  Franklin  had  spent  fourteen  in  London  as 
agent  for  Pennsylvania ;  and  of  late  he  had  been  agent 
for  Georgia  and  Massachusetts  as  well.  The  ambassa- 
dors accredited  to  St.  James's  from  foreign  Courts 
treated  him  like  an  esteemed  member  of  their  own 
body.  He  was  at  home  in  the  best  society  in  town  and 
country,  awing  every  company  by  his  great  age  and 
pleasing  them  by  his  immortal  youth.  The  ministers 
of  state  with  whom  he  had  business  minded  their  be- 
haviour in  the  presence  of  one  who  had  talked  with  Sir 
William  Wyndham  before  they  themselves  had  been 
born  or  thought  of.  Men  of  letters  and  men  of  science 
could  not  have  enough  of  the  reminiscences  of  a  vet- 
eran who  fifty  years  before  had  heard  Mandeville  dis- 
course at  his  club,  and  had  been  shown  by  Sir  Hans 
Sloane  over  his  collection  of  curiosities  at  a  time  when 
the  British  Museum  was  yet  in  the  future.  People 
hardly  remembered  that  he  was  a  colonist,  and  were  as 
proud  of  his  European  reputation  as  if  he  had  been  the 
native  of  an  English  county  and  the  scholar  of  an  Eng- 
lish university.  He  returned  the  feeling.  He  loved 
our  country,  and  all  parts  of  it.  At  Dublin  he  had 
been  greeted  with  the  irresistible  welcome  which  Irish- 
men bestow  upon  those  to  whom  they  wish  to  do  the 
honours  of  Ireland.  He  had  spent  in  Scotland  the  six 
happiest  weeks  of  his  life ;  and  there,  if  circumstances 
had  permitted,  he  would  gladly  have  passed  the  rest 
of  it.  And  as  for  England,  —  "Of  all  the  enviable 
things,"  he  said,  "  I  envy  it  most  its  people.  Why 
should  that  pretty  island,  which  is  but  like  a  stepping- 
stone  in  a  brook,  scarce  enough  of  it  above  water  to 
keep  one's  shoes  dry,  enjoy  in  almost  every  neighbour- 
hood more  sensible,  virtuous,  and  elegant  minds  than 


1 68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

we  can  collect  in  ranging  a  hundred  leagues  of  our  vast 
forests?"1 

He  had  long  looked  forward  to  the  evening  of  life, 
the  last  hours  of  which,  in  his  cheerful  view,  were  sure 
to  be  the  most  joyous;  and  he  had  pleased  himself  with 
the  anticipation  of  dying,  as  he  had  been  born  and  had 
always  lived,  in  "the  King's  dominions."  But  now  he 
foresaw  storms  and  troubles  and,  at  near  seventy  years 
of  age,  he  did  not  expect  to  see  the  end  of  them ;  as  the 
Ministers  might  read  in  a  letter  which  they  had  thought 
it  worth  their  while  to  detain  and  violate.  That  appre- 
hension lent  force  and  earnestness  to  the  efforts  which 
he  made  in  every  quarter  where  his  influence  could 
penetrate.  On  the  one  hand  he  adjured  the  New  Eng- 
enders to  reflect  that,  just  as  among  friends  every 
affront  was  not  worth  a  duel,  so  between  the  mother- 
country  and  the  colonies  every  mistake  in  government, 
and  every  encroachment  on  right,  was  not  worth  a  re- 
bellion. On  the  other  hand  he  took  care  that  any  Brit- 
ish statesman  to  whose  ears  he  could  obtain  access 
should  hear  the  words  of  reason  and  soberness ;  and  the 
best  of  them  regarded  him  as  a  valuable  coadjutor  in 
preserving  the  peace  of  the  Empire.  Chatham,  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  openly  said  that  if  he  were  first  minis- 
ter he  should  not  scruple  publicly  to  call  to  his  assist- 

1  In  our  own  time,  as  in  Franklin's,  Americans  are  apt  to  express  their 
kindly  sentiments  towards  England  in  diminutives,  like  a  Russian  who  calls 
the  Empress  his  Little  Mother. 

"  An  islet  is  a  world,"  she  said, 

"  When  glory  with  its  dust  has  blended, 

And  Britain  keeps  her  noble  dead 

Till  earth  and  sea  and  skies  are  rended." 

Nay,  let  our  brothers  of  the  West 

Write  smiling  in  their  florid  pages; 
"  One-half  her  soil  has  walked  the  rest 

In  poets,  heroes,  martyrs,  sages." 

The  verses  are  by  Wendell  Holmes;  and  the  idea,  or  something  like  it, 
has  passed  across  the  fancy  of  many  a  one  of  his  countrymen  beneath  the 
limes  of  Stratford-on-Avon  churchyard,  or  in  the  transepts  of  Westminster 
Abbey. 


FRANKLIN  AND    THE  LETTERS  169 

ance  a  man  whom  all  Europe  held  in  high  estimation 
for  his  knowledge  and  wisdom,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
rank  with  Boyle  and  Newton  as  an  honour,  not  to  the 
English  nation  only,  but  to  human  nature. 

Most  unfortunately,  at  this  exact  moment,  Franklin 
became  the  centre  of  one  of  those  unhappy  scandals 
which  in  a  season  of  political  perturbation  are  certain 
to  occur;  and  which  are  made  the  very  most  of  by  able 
men  who  mean  mischief,  and  by  the  multitude  who  do 
not  understand  the  deeper  issues  but  can  be  voluble 
on  a  personal  question.  There  had  reached  his  hands 
a  mass  of  correspondence  which  proved  beyond  any 
manner  of  doubt  that  Hutchinson  and  Oliver,  the  Gov- 
ernor and  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Massachusetts,  had 
persistently  applied  themselves  to  inflame  the  minds 
of  the  home  authorities  against  the  colony,  and  had 
been  profuse  in  the  suggestion  of  schemes  framed  with 
the  object  of  destroying  its  liberties.  The  letters  were 
private ;  but  Franklin,  as  agent  for  Massachusetts, 
thought  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  send  them  to  the 
Speaker  of  her  Assembly ;  and  he  continued  to  think 
so  until  his  life's  end,  though  it  was  not  a  subject  on 
which  he  loved  to  talk.  It  is  a  sound  rule  that  confi- 
dential correspondence  should,  under  no  circumstances 
whatever,  be  used  for  the  purpose  of  damaging  a  political 
adversary.  In  our  own  day,  private  letters  attributed 
to  a  celebrated  public  man  were  printed  in  a  great  news- 
paper ;  and  the  step  was  defended  on  the  ground  that 
the  writer  was  a  public  enemy,  whose  exposure  was 
demanded  by  the  interests  of  the  State.  That  argu- 
ment must  have  presented  itself  in  its  utmost  force  to 
the  agent  of  a  colony,  when  he  lighted  on  the  discovery 
that  men  —  born  and  reared  within  its  confines,  eating 
its  bread  and  charged  with  its  welfare  —  had  done  their 
utmost  to  misrepresent  its  people,  to  destroy  its  char- 
tered rights,  and  to  bring  upon  it  the  insult,  the  hardship, 
and  the  fearful  perils  of  a  penal  military  occupation. 

And,  again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  sanctity 
of  the  Post  Office  was  then  a  transparent  fiction.     No 


170  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

man's  correspondence  was  safe  ;  and  those  who  suffered 
the  most  were  tempted,  when  the  occasion  offered,  to 
repay  their  persecutors  in  kind.  The  confidential  clerks 
of  the  Postmaster-General  were  sometimes  engaged 
twelve  hours  on  a  stretch  in  rifling  private  letters.  The 
King,  to  judge  by  the  endorsements  in  his  own  hand,  — 
which  marked  the  hour  and  minute  when  he  received 
each  packet  of  intercepted  documents,  and  the  hour  and 
minute  when  he  returned  it  to  the  Office,  —  must  have 
passed  a  great  deal  of  his  time  in  reading  them.  A 
politician,  when  his  turn  came  to  be  out  in  the  cold, 
recognised  the  liability  to  have  his  letters  opened  as 
one  of  the  incidents  of  opposition,  and  did  not  expect 
even  the  poor  compliment  of  having  them  reclosed 
with  any  decent  appearance  of  concealing  the  treatment 
to  which  they  had  been  subjected.  "  To  avoid  the  im- 
pertinence of  a  Post  Office,"  wrote  Lord  Charlemont 
to  Edmund  Burke,  "  I  take  the  opportunity  of  sending 
this  by  a  private  hand."  And  Hans  Stanley,  a  public 
servant  of  considerable  note  in  his  day,  complained  to 
Mr.  Grenville  that  all  his  correspondence,  important 
or  trivial,  "  had  been  opened  in  a  very  awkward  and 
bungling  manner." 

Bold  men,  with  a  secure  social  position  and  a  touch 
of  humour,  made  use  of  the  opportunity  in  order  to  give 
their  opponents  in  the  Cabinet  a  piece  of  their  mind 
under  circumstances  when  it  could  not  be  resented.  A 
friend  of  George  Selwyn  regaled  him  with  a  personal 
anecdote,  rather  abstruse  in  itself,  and  rendered  hope- 
lessly unintelligible  by  being  couched  in  bad  Latin.  "  I 
wrote  this,"  he  says,  "to  perplex  Lord  Grantham,  who 
may  probably  open  the  letter."  "I  don't  know,"  Rigby 
told  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  "  who  is  to  read  this  letter, 
whether  French  ministers  or  English  ministers ;  but  I 
am  not  guarded  in  what  I  write,  as  I  choose  the  latter 
should  know  through  every  possible  channel  the  utter 
contempt  I  bear  them."1     But  a  system  which  was  no 

1  The  letter,  good  reading  like  everything  of  Rigby's,  referred  to  the 
composition  of  Rockingham's  first  Government.     "  Their  Board  of  Trade," 


FRANKLIN'  AND    THE  LETTERS  \J \ 

worse  than  a  tiresome  and  offensive  joke  to  men  of  the 
world,  who  wore  swords,  and  met  the  Postmaster-Gen- 
eral on  equal  terms  every  other  evening  at  White's  or 
Almack's,  had  its  real  terrors  for  humble  people.  A 
gentleman  wrote  from  London  to  New  York,  with  noth- 
ing more  treasonous  to  say  than  that  he  was  concerned 
at  the  alarming  and  critical  situation.  He  expressed 
himself,  however,  as  fearing  that  his  American  letters, 
to  judge  by  the  red  wax  over  a  black  wafer,  were 
opened  in  the  Post  Office ;  and  he  justly  observed  that 
intercourse  between  friend  and  friend  was  rendered  pre- 
carious by  such  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  authorities. 
Franklin  himself  had  the  same  grievance  against  the 
British  Government ;  and  took  it  very  coolly.  Many 
months  before  the  war  broke  out  he  had  occasion  thus 
to  warn  his  sister  in  Boston  :  "  I  am  apprehensive  that 
the  letters  between  us,  though  very  innocent  ones,  are 
intercepted.  They  might  restore  to  me  yours  at  least, 
after  reading  them ;  especially  as  I  never  complain  of 
broken,  patched-up  seals."  "I  am  told,"  he  said  on 
another  occasion,  "that  administration  is  possessed  of 
most  of  my  letters  sent  or  received  on  public  affairs  for 
some  years  past;  copies  of  them  having  been  obtained 
from  the  files  of  the  several  Assemblies,  or  as  they 
passed  through  the  Post  Office.  I  do  not  condemn 
their  ministerial  industry,  or  complain  of  it." 

Whether  Franklin  was  justified  in  his  own  sight  by 
high  considerations  of  policy,  or  by  the  bad  example  of 
the  British  Post  Office,  his  conduct  required  no  defence 
in  the  view  of  his  employers  beyond  the  water.  He 
had  intended  the  letters  to  be  seen  by  about  as  many 
pairs  of  eyes  as  those  which,  in  London  official  circles, 
had  the  privilege  of  prying  into  his  own  correspondence; 
and  his  object  was  to  enlighten  certain  leading  men  of 
the  colony,  belonging  to  both  parties,  with  regard  to  the 
character  of  the  Governor,  and  to  put  them  on  their 

he  wrote,  "  is  not  yet  fixed,  except  Lord  Dartmouth  for  its  head,  who 
I  don't  hear  has  yet  recommended  Whitefield  for  the  bishopric  of 
Quebec." 


172  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

guard  against  his  machinations.     But  such  secrets  are 
hard  to  keep  when  men's  minds  are  in  a  ferment,  and 
when  great  events  are  in  the  air.     The  Massachusetts 
Assembly  insisted  on  having  the  letters.    On  the  second 
of  June,  1 773,  the  House,  sitting  within  closed  doors,  heard 
them  read  by  Samuel  Adams,  and  voted  by  a  hundred 
and  one  to  five  that  their  tendency  and  design  was  to 
subvert   the   constitution  of    the  Government,   and    to 
introduce  arbitrary  power  into   the   Province.     Before 
another  month  was  out  they  had  been  discussed  in  all 
the  farmhouses,   and  denounced  from    almost   all   the 
pulpits.     They  came  upon  the  community  as  a  revela- 
tion from  the  nether  world,   and  everywhere  aroused 
unaffected  astonishment  and  regret,  which  soon  gave 
place  to  resentment  and  alarm.     "  These  men,"  (it  was 
said  with  a  unanimity  which  the  majority  of  twenty  to 
one  in  the  Assembly  inadequately  represented,)  "  no 
strangers  or  foreigners,  but  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of 
our   flesh,   born  and  educated  among  us,"   have  alien- 
ated from  us  the  affections  of  our  sovereign,  have  de- 
stroyed the  harmony  and  good-will  which  existed  between 
Great  Britain  and  Massachusetts,  and,  having  already 
caused   bloodshed   in    our   streets,   will,   if   unchecked, 
plunge  our  country  into  all  the  horrors  of  civil  war. 
The  sentiments  of  the  colony  were  embodied  by  the 
Assembly  in  an  address  to  the  King,  stating  the  case 
against  Hutchinson  and  Oliver  in  terms  which  cannot 
be  described  as  immoderate,  and  still  less  as  disrespect- 
ful ;  and  humbly  but  most  pointedly  praying  for  their 
removal  from  office.     Franklin   placed  the  petition  in 
the  hands  of  the  Secretary  of  State,  for  presentation  to 
his  Majesty  at  the  first  convenient  opportunity ;    and 
Dartmouth,  in  return,  expressed  his  pleasure  that  a  sin- 
cere disposition  prevailed  in  the  people  of   Massachu- 
setts to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  mother-country,  and 
his  earnest  hope  that  the  time  was  at  no  great  distance 
when  every  ground   of   uneasiness   would   cease,    and 
tranquillity  and  happiness  would  be  restored. 

Dartmouth's  intuitions,  as  usual,  were  good  and  wise. 


FRANKLIN  AND    THE  LETTERS  173 

The  opportunity  had  come  for  the  mother-country  to 
assume  an  attitude  of  true  superiority.  An  ancient  and 
powerful  State,  in  its  dealings  with  dependencies  whose 
social  system  is  still  primitive,  and  whose  public  men  are 
as  yet  untrained,  can  afford  to  make  allowance  for  faults 
of  taste,  or  even  for  breaches  of  official  custom  and  pro- 
priety. But  dignified  self-restraint  was  not  then  the  order 
of  the  day  in  high  places.  The  complaint  of  Massachu- 
setts against  her  Governors  was  referred  to  the  Privy 
Council,  and  the  Solicitor-General  appeared  on  behalf 
of  Hutchinson  and  Oliver  to  oppose  the  prayer  of  the 
petition.  That  Solicitor-General  was  Wedderburn,  who 
before  he  joined  the  Government  had  told  them  in 
debate  that  their  policy  would  inevitably  ruin  the  coun- 
try by  the  total  loss  of  its  American  dominions;  and 
that,  if  for  reasons  which  could  not  be  made  public  such 
a  policy  must  be  continued,  Lord  North  would  have  to 
remain  in  office,  as  no  man  of  honour  or  respectability 
would  undertake  to  do  the  duties  of  his  situation. 

It  was  put  about  town  that  the  famous  advocate  in- 
tended to  handle  Dr.  Franklin  in  a  style  which  would 
be  worth  the  hearing.  Privy  Councillors  attended  in 
such  numbers  that  they  would  almost  have  made  a  quo- 
rum in  the  House  of  Commons.  At  the  bar  stood  rows 
of  distinguished  strangers,  more  worthy  of  the  title  than 
those  who  are  ordinarily  designated  by  it  on  such  occa- 
sions, for  Burke,  and  Priestley,  and  Jeremy  Bentham 
were  among  them.  The  ante-room  and  passages  were 
thronged  with  people  who  had  to  content  themselves 
with  learning,  from  the  tones  of  his  voice,  that  a  great 
orator  was  speaking  contemptuously  of  some  one.  For 
the  Solicitor  was  as  good  as  his  word.  Leaving  aside 
the  merits  of  the  question,  he  directed  against  Franklin 
a  personal  attack  which  was  a  masterpiece  of  invective. 
The  judges  in  the  case,  encouraged  by  the  undisguised 
delight  of  their  Lord  President,  rolled  in  their  seats  and 
roared  with  laughter.  Lord  North,  alone  among  the 
five  and  thirty,  listened  with  gravity  in  his  features  and, 
it  may  be  believed,  with  something   like  death  in   his 


174  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

heart.  Franklin,  as  a  friend  who  closely  observed  his 
bearing  relates,  "  stood  conspicuously  erect,  without  the 
smallest  movement  of  any  part  of  his  body.  The 
muscles  of  his  face  had  been  previously  composed,  so 
as  to  afford  a  tranquil  expression  of  countenance,  and 
he  did  not  suffer  the  slightest  alteration  of  it  to  appear 
during  the  continuance  of  the  speech."  He  wore  a  full 
dress  suit  of  spotted  Manchester  velvet,  which  that 
evening  retired  into  the  recesses  of  his  wardrobe.  It 
reappeared  on  the  sixth  of  February,  1778,  when  he 
affixed  his  signature  to  that  treaty  with  France  by  which 
the  United  States  took  rank  as  an  independent  nation, 
and  obtained  a  powerful  ally.  So  smart  a  coat  attracted 
the  notice  of  his  brother  Commissioners,  accustomed  to 
see  him  in  the  staid  and  almost  patriarchal  costume 
which  all  Paris  knew.  They  conjectured,  and  rightly, 
that  it  was  the  first  day  since  the  scene  at  the  Privy 
Council  Office  on  which  he  cared  to  be  reminded  of 
what  had  occurred  there. 

The  immediate  effect  of  Wedderburn's  harangue,  as 
an  appeal  to  men  sitting  in  a  judicial  capacity,  has 
in  our  country  never  been  surpassed ;  and  its  ultimate 
consequences  went  far  beyond  the  special  issue  towards 
which  it  was  directed.  Twenty  years  afterwards,  when 
Franklin's  pamphlet  entitled  "  Rules  for  Reducing  a 
great  Empire  to  a  small  one"  was  republished  in  Lon- 
don, the  editor  paid  to  Lord  Loughborough  a  compli- 
ment which,  as  Alexander  Wedderburn,  he  had  justly 
earned.  "  When  I  reflect,"  such  were  the  words  of  the 
Dedication,  "  on  your  Lordship's  magnanimous  conduct 
towards  the  author  of  the  following  Rules,  there  is  a 
peculiar  propriety  in  dedicating  this  new  edition  of 
them  to  a  nobleman  whose  talents  were  so  eminently 
useful  in  procuring  the  emancipation  of  our  American 
brethren." 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   PENAL   LAWS.      THEIR   RECEPTION   IN  AMERICA 

In  such  a  temper,  and  with  such  an  example  to  guide 
them,  the  Houses  of  Parliament  applied  themselves 
to  the  question  of  the  hour.  When  Privy  Councillors, 
duly  appointed  to  try  an  issue,  had  laughed  the  colo- 
nists out  of  court,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that 
the  rank  and  file  of  a  political  assembly  would  grant 
them  a  patient,  or  even  so  much  as  a  decent,  hearing. 
England  had  open  before  her  one  policy  which  was 
prudent,  and  another  which  at  the  worst  was  not  igno- 
ble. Clemency  and  forbearance  were  her  true  wisdom ; 
but,  if  she  resolved  to  punish,  she  should  have  done 
so  in  a  manner  worthy  of  a  great  nation.  The  crime, 
since  such  it  was  adjudged  to  be,  was  common  to  the 
four  chief  cities  of  America.  Philadelphia  had  led  the 
way  in  voting  for  resistance.  Charleston  had  followed 
suit ;  and  it  was  not  till  weeks  had  elapsed  that  Boston, 
on  the  same  day  as  New  York,  adopted  the  Resolutions 
which  had  been  passed  in  Philadelphia.  Those  Resolu- 
tions had  been  made  good  in  action,  by  each  of  the 
places  concerned,  with  just  as  much  or  as  little  violence 
as  under  the  circumstances  of  the  special  case  was 
needed  in  order  to  do  the  work  thoroughly.  The 
British  Ministry  should  have  resorted  to  forgiveness 
and  concession,  or  to  a  general  and  impartial  severity. 
But  neither  of  those  two  courses  pleased  the  King  and 
his  advisers ;  and  the  opportunity  was  taken  for  exact- 
ing a  vindictive  penalty  from  one  small,  exposed,  and  (as 
it  was  believed)  unwarlike  and  defenceless  community. 

Boston  had  done  the  same  as  the  others,  and  had  done 

i75 


176  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

it  under  the  provocation  of  having  been  dragooned,  in 
time  of  universal  peace,  for  faults  to  which  not  one 
member  of  Parliament  in  ten  could  have  put  a  name,  if 
he  had  set  his  mind  to  think  them  over.  But,  where 
antipathy  exists,  men  soon  find  reasons  to  justify  it; 
and  the  drop-scene  of  the  impending  American  drama, 
as  presented  to  British  eyes,  was  a  picture  of  the  New 
England  character  daubed  in  colours  which  resembled 
the  original  as  little  as  they  matched  each  other.  The 
men  of  Massachusetts  were  sly  and  turbulent,  puritans 
and  scoundrels,  pugnacious  ruffians  and  arrant  cowards. 
That  was  the  constant  theme  of  the  newspapers,  and 
the  favourite  topic  with  those  officers  of  the  army  of  oc- 
cupation whose  letters  had  gone  the  round  of  clubs  and 
country  houses.  The  archives  of  the  Secretary  of  State 
were  full  of  trite  calumnies  and  foolish  prophecies.  Bos- 
tonians,  so  Lord  Dartmouth  was  informed  by  an  officious 
correspondent,  were  not  only  the  worst  of  subjects,  but 
the  most  immoral  of  men.  "  If  large  and  loud  profes- 
sions of  the  Gospel  be  an  exact  criterion  of  vital  religion, 
they  are  the  best  people  on  earth.  But  if  meekness, 
gentleness,  and  patience  constitute  any  part,  those  quali- 
ties are  not  found  there.  If  they  could  maintain  a  state 
of  independence,  they  would  soon  be  at  war  among  them- 
selves." x  Such  was  the  forecast  with  regard  to  a  city 
whose  inhabitants  were  destined  through  a  long  future 
to  enjoy  in  quite  exceptional  measure  the  blessings  of 
mutual  esteem,  and  of  the  internal  peace  which  results 
from  it.  It  was  a  specimen  of  the  predictions  which  at 
that  moment  obtained  belief  in  Parliament  and  in  the 
country. 

The  cue  was  given  from  above.  On  the  seventh  of 
March,  1774,  Lord  North  communicated  to  the  House 
of  Commons  a  royal  message,  referring  to  the  unwar- 
rantable practices  concerted  and  carried  on  in  North 
America,  and  dwelling  more  particularly  on  the  violent 
proceedings  at  the  town  and  port  of  Boston  in  the  prov- 

1  Dartmouth  Mamiscripts,  vol.  ii.,  Letter  of  February,  1774. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  \yy 

ince  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  The  fact  was  that  George 
the  Third  had  seen  General  Gage,  fresh  from  America ; 
one  of  those  mischievous  public  servants  who  know  a 
colony  so  much  better  than  the  colonists  know  it  them- 
selves. "  His  language,"  said  the  King,  "  was  very  con- 
sonant to  his  character  of  an  honest  determined  man. 
He  says  they  will  be  lyons,  whilst  we  are  lambs ;  but,  if 
we  take  the  resolute  part,  they  will  undoubtedly  prove 
very  weak."  His  Majesty  therefore  desired  Lord  North 
not  to  repeat  what  he  described  as  the  fatal  compliance 
of  1766,  — that  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  to  which,  in  the 
royal  view,  all  the  difficulties  of  the  present  situation 
were  owing.  The  Minister  was  directed  to  send  for  the 
General,  and  hear  his  ideas  on  the  mode  of  compel- 
ling the  Bostonians  to  acquiesce  submissively  in  whatever 
fate  might  be  reserved  for  them. 

The  world  soon  learned  what  was  in  store  for  the  un- 
happy city.  On  the  fourteenth  of  March  Lord  North 
introduced  a  bill  for  closing  its  harbour  and  transferring 
the  business  of  the  Custom-house  to  the  port  of  Salem. 
If  the  measure  became  law  (so  he  foretold  in  the  affected 
lightness  of  his  heart),  the  presence  of  four  or  five  frig- 
ates in  Massachusetts  Bay,  without  an  additional  regi- 
ment on  Massachusetts  soil,  would  at  once  place  the 
guilty  municipality  for  purposes  of  foreign  trade  at  a 
distance  of  seventeen  miles  from  the  sea.  Parliament 
might  well  be  nattered  by  the  assurance  that,  in  the  even- 
ings of  a  week,  it  could  do  for  the  detriment  of  Boston 
four  times  that  which  the  forces  of  nature  had  taken 
eighteen  centuries  to  do  for  Ravenna.  The  Government 
majority  was  in  a  mood  to  believe  anything.  One  of 
their  number,  to  whom  the  House  listened  while  those 
who  spoke  on  behalf  of  the  incriminated  town  were  in- 
terrupted or  silenced,  declared  that,  if  every  dwelling  in 
it  was  knocked  about  the  ears  of  its  townsmen,  they 
would  get  no  more  than  their  deserts.  He  urged  that 
that  nest  of  locusts  should  be  extirpated,  and  enforced 
his  appeal  by  the  famous  sentence  in  which  Cato  adjured 
the  Roman  Senate  to  demolish  Carthage.     A  poor  little 

N 


178  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Carthage  where  every  child  attended  school,  and  no  man 
was  a  professional  soldier;  with  its  open  streets,  its  un- 
protected quays,  and  a  powerful  force  of  legionaries  al- 
ready quartered  in  its  citadel ! 

That  was  the  first  blow  ;  and  others  fell  in  rapid  succes- 
sion. On  the  twenty-eighth  of  March  the  Prime  Minister 
explained  the  plan  of  a  measure  by  which  he  purposed 
to  extinguish  self-government  in  Massachusetts.  The 
bill,  stringent  in  the  earlier  draft,  was  altered  for  the 
harsher  and  the  worse  before  it  was  laid  on  the  table. 
Lord  George  Germaine,  in  whom,  not  so  very  long  before, 
the  Rockinghams  had  been  fond  enough  to  discern  their 
possible  parliamentary  leader,  commented  upon  the  pro- 
posal of  the  Government  as  well  meant,  but  far  too  weak. 
He  cordially  approved  the  provisions  by  which  a  town 
meeting  might  only  be  held  under  permission  from  the 
Governor.  Why,  he  asked,  should  men  of  a  mercantile 
cast  collect  together,  and  debate  on  political  matters, 
when  they  ought  to  be  minding  their  private  business  ? 
But  the  bill  would  only  cover  half  the  ground,  and  the 
least  important  half,  so  long  as  the  central  Council  of  the 
Colony  was  a  tumultuous  rabble,  meddling  with  affairs 
of  State  which  they  were  unable  to  understand.  That 
Council,  in  his  opinion,  should  be  reconstructed  on  the 
model  of  the  House  of  Peers.  Lord  North  thanked  the 
orator,  (and  a  real  orator  even  his  former  friends  admitted 
that  on  this  occasion  he  had  proved  himself  to  be,)  for  a 
suggestion  "  worthy  of  his  great  mind."  On  the  fif- 
teenth of  April  the  bill  was  presented  to  the  House 
with  the  addition  of  words  enacting  that  the  Council,  in 
whose  selection  the  Assembly  under  the  existing  consti- 
tution had  a  voice,  should  be  nominated  exclusively  by 
the  Crown.1 

Governor  Pownall,  who  had  learned  the  institutions 
and  geography  of  Massachusetts  by  ruling  it  on  the  spot, 

1  "It  was  a  year,"  wrote  Horace  Walpole,  "of  fine  harangues;"  and  he 
instanced  especially  Wedderburn  against  Franklin,  Burke  on  the  Tea-duty, 
and  Lord  George  Germaine  on  the  government  of  Massachusetts.  —  Last 
Journals,  April,  1774. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  1 79 

reminded  the  House  that  it  was  not  a  question  of  Boston 
only.  If  the  measure  was  carried,  local  business  could 
not  be  transacted  in  the  furthest  corner  of  Maine,  unless 
special  leave  to  hold  a  town-meeting  had  been  obtained 
from  a  governor  resident  at  the  other  end  of  three  hun- 
dred miles  of  bad  roads  and  forest  tracks.  Burke,  very- 
ill  heard  by  an  assembly  which  professed  to  regard  a 
colonial  Council  as  a  riotous  rabble,  called  in  vain  for  the 
exercise  of  care  and  deliberation.  They  were  engaged,  he 
said,  on  nothing  lighter  than  the  proscription  of  a  prov- 
ince :  an  undertaking  which,  whether  they  desired  it  or 
not,  would  expand  itself  ere  long  into  the  proscription 
of  a  nation.  And  Savile,  begging  that  attention  might 
be  granted  him  during  the  length  of  a  single  sentence, 
exclaimed  that  a  charter,  which  conveyed  a  sacred  right, 
should  not  be  broken  without  first  hearing  what  might 
be  put  forward  in  defence  of  it  by  those  who  lived  be- 
neath its  safeguard.  But  such  considerations  were  not 
to  the  purpose  of  the  audience.  It  was  one  of  those 
moments  when  the  talk  and  tone  of  society  have  greater 
influence  than  the  arguments  of  debate ;  and  a  squire, 
who  had  recently  been  made  a  baronet,  gave  the  House 
a  sample  of  what  passed  current  in  the  lobby  as  a  valu- 
able contribution  towards  the  right  understanding  of  the 
American  question.  Levelling  principles,  this  gentle- 
man affirmed,  prevailed  in  New  England,  and  he  had 
the  best  of  reasons  for  stating  it.  He  had  an  acquaint- 
ance who  called  at  a  merchant's  house  in  Boston,  and 
asked  the  servant  if  his  master  was  at  home.  "  My 
master  !  "  the  man  replied.  "  I  have  no  master  but  Jesus 
Christ." 

The  bill  for  annulling  the  charter  was  accompanied 
by  another  for  the  Impartial  Administration  of  Justice 
in  Massachusetts  Bay :  which  was  a  fine  name  for  a  law 
empowering  the  Governor,  if  any  magistrate,  revenue 
officer,  or  military  man  was  indicted  for  murder,  to  send 
him  to  England  for  trial  in  the  King's  Bench.  Barre 
and  Conway  challenged  Lord  North  to  produce  a  single 
example  of  a  government  servant  who,   having   been 


l80  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

charged  with  a  capital  offence,  had  suffered  from  the 
injustice  of  an  American  tribunal.  They  recalled  to 
the  memory  of  Parliament,  (so  short  if  the  good  deeds 
of  those  whom  it  disliked  were  in  question,)  how,  at  a 
time  when  public  feeling  in  the  colony  was  at  a  height 
which  in  the  future  never  could  be  over-passed,  Captain 
Preston  and  his  soldiers,  after  the  fairest  of  fair  trials, 
had  been  acquitted  by  "an  American  jury,  a  New 
England  jury,  a  Boston  jury."  And  now  it  was  pro- 
posed to  remove  the  cognisance  of  grave  political 
offences  from  a  court  without  fear  and  without  favour, 
to  one  which  was  notoriously  ready,  —  as  Wilkes  had 
experienced,  —  to  subserve  the  vengeance  of  Ministers, 
and  which,  if  the  occasion  arose,  would  be  even  more 
willing  to  make  itself  the  instrument  of  their  misplaced 
lenity.  The  government  supporters  took  no  notice 
whatsoever  of  Captain  Preston's  acquittal,  though  it  was 
a  concrete  instance  so  recent  and  so  much  in  point  that 
it  ought  to  have  coloured  and  permeated  the  entire  dis- 
cussion. After  the  usual  fashion  of  a  party  which  has 
plenty  of  votes,  and  no  case,  they  wandered  far  and 
wide  over  the  whole  colonial  controversy.  The  most 
admired  speech  was  that  of  young  Lord  Caermarthen, 
who  denied  the  right  of  Americans  to  complain  that 
they  were  taxed  without  being  represented,  when  such 
places  as  Manchester  —  and,  he  might  have  added, 
Leeds  and  Sheffield  and  Birmingham  —  had  no  members 
of  their  own  in  the  British  Parliament.  It  was  indeed  a 
magnificent  anticipation  of  the  calling  in  of  the  New 
World  to  balance  the  inequalities  of  the  old.  The  debate 
was  wound  up  by  the  gentleman  who  had  compared 
Boston  to  Carthage.  Speaking  this  time  in  English,  he 
recommended  the  Government,  if  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts did  not  take  their  chastisement  kindly,  to  burn 
their  woods,  and  leave  their  country  open  to  the  opera- 
tions of  the  military.  It  was  better,  he  said,  that  those 
regions  should  be  ruined  by  our  own  soldiers  than 
wrested  from  us  by  our  rebellious  children. 

The    effect   of    Lord   Caermarthen's    allusion  to   un- 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  l8l 

represented  Manchester,  as  justifying  the  taxation  of 
unrepresented  America,  was  so  great  that  four  days 
afterwards  Burke  thought  it  worthy  of  a  refutation. 
"So  then,"  he  said,  "because  some  towns  in  England 
are  not  represented,  America  is  to  have  no  representative 
at  all.  They  are  our  children ;  but,  when  children  ask 
for  bread,  we  are  not  to  give  them  a  stone.  When  this 
child  of  ours  wishes  to  assimilate  to  its  parent,  and  to 
reflect  with  true  filial  resemblance  the  beauteous  counte- 
nance of  British  liberty,  are  we  to  turn  to  them  the 
shameful  parts  of  our  constitution  ?  Are  we  to  give 
them  our  weakness  for  their  strength,  our  opprobrium 
for  their  glory  ?  " 

Even  after  the  lapse  of  a  century  and  a  quarter 
these  debates  are  not  pleasant  reading  for  an  English- 
man. They  went  far  to  justify  Turgot  in  his  wonder 
that  a  country,  which  had  cultivated  with  so  much  suc- 
cess all  the  branches  of  natural  science,  should  remain 
so  completely  below  itself  in  the  science  the  most  in- 
teresting of  all,  that  of  public  happiness.1  The  best 
which  could  be  said  for  the  policy  adopted  by  Parliament 
was  that  a  great  country  should  stand  upon  its  rights 
against  everybody,  and  at  all  hazards.  But  kindred 
States,  like  the  members  of  a  family,  sometimes  do  well 
to  refrain  from  insisting  on  advantages  which  the  law, 
if  strictly  read,  allows  them  to  take.  "  There  was  a 
time,"  (wrote  Philip  Francis,  putting  into  five  lines  the 
moral  of  the  whole  story,)  "when  I  could  reason  as 
logically  and  passionately  as  anybody  against  the  Amer- 
icans ;  but,  since  I  have  been  obliged  to  study  the  book 
of  wisdom,  I  have  dismissed  logic  out  of  my  library. 
The  fate  of  nations  must  not  be  tried  by  forms."  Passion 
had  more  to  do  than  logic  with  the  undertaking  which 
occupied  the  two  Houses  during  the  spring  of  1774. 
If  preambles  spoke  the  truth,  it  should  have  been  stated 
broadly  and  plainly  at  the  head  of  each  of  those  fatal 
bills  that,  whereas  the  inhabitants  of  the  capital  city  of 

1  Letter  from  Turgot  to  Dr.  Price,  March  22,  1778. 


1 82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Massachusetts  Bay  had  incurred  the  displeasure  of  his 
Majesty  and  this  present  Parliament,  it  was  adjudged 
necessary  and  expedient  to  pay  the  colony  out.  That 
was  the  object  aimed  at;  and  it  was  pursued  with  all 
the  disregard  of  appearances  which  had  marked  the 
proceedings  of  the  same  House  of  Commons  in  its 
crusade  against  the  electors  of  Middlesex,  and  with  still 
greater  indifference  to  consequences.  The  members  of 
the  majority  forgot  that  in  the  long  run  it  did  not  lie 
with  them  to  decide  that  Boston,  and  Boston  alone, 
should  have  to  answer  for  a  course  of  conduct  in  which 
four  colonies  had  taken  part,  and  which  commanded  the 
sympathy  of  all  the  others.  They  credited  communities 
of  their  own  race  and  blood  with  the  baseness  of  con- 
senting to  sit  quiet  while  one  of  their  number  was  ruined 
for  having  done  its  share  loyally,  if  somewhat  boister- 
ously, in  an  enterprise  to  which  all  were  pledged.  In 
the  optimism  of  their  resentment  they  ignored  human 
nature,  and  put  out  of  their  recollection  the  unanimity 
of  America  in  her  resistance  to  the  Stamp  Act.  And 
in  their  heat  and  haste  they  thrust  out  of  sight  the 
dignity  of  debate,  the  rights  of  a  parliamentary  minority, 
and  even  a  show  of  fair  play  towards  the  people  whose 
freedom  and  prosperity  they  were  intent  on  destroying. 

The  Americans  who  resided  in  London,  or  who  found 
themselves  there  in  the  course  of  travel,  petitioned  that 
one  of  their  cities  should  not  be  visited  with  unexampled 
rigour  before  it  was  so  much  as  apprised  that  any  accu- 
sation had  been  brought  against  it.  Their  prayer  was 
treated  with  silent  contempt.  But  something  more  than 
silent  contempt  was  required  to  stifle  the  voice  of  the 
true  friends  of  England  and  of  America  within  the 
walls  of  St.  Stephen's.  Insolence  and  intolerance  not 
often  before  ran  so  high,  or  were  directed  against  states- 
men of  such  established  character  and  standing.  Barre 
had  to  sit  down  before  he  had  finished  his  say.  Con- 
way, for  the  crime  of  imploring  the  House,  in  a  very 
familiar  Latin  phrase,  to  hear  the  other  side,  was 
shouted  down  by  men  who  had  listened  to  a  fool  when 


THE  PENAL   LAWS  1 83 

he  treated  them  to  the  quotation  of  "  Delenda  est  Car- 
thago." When  General  Burgoyne  expressed  a  wish,  (and 
he  had  better  reason  than  he  then  knew  for  wishing  it,) 
to  see  America  convinced  by  persuasion  rather  than  the 
sword,  the  sentiment  raised  as  great  a  storm  as  if  it  had 
been  a  piece  of  impudent  disloyalty.  Johnstone,  a  dash- 
ing sailor,  who  had  been  governor  of  Florida,  contrived 
to  tell  the  House  that  the  work  on  which  they  were 
engaged  would  produce  a  confederacy  of  the  colonies, 
and  would  end  in  a  general  revolt;  but  the  roisterers 
on  the  benches  opposite  soon  taught  him  that  he 
had  brought  his  knowledge  of  America  to  the  wrong 
market. 

Such  was  the  treatment  of  men  each  of  whom  had 
used  a  pistol  in  battle,  and  was  ready  for  one  on  very 
short  notice  in  the  ring  of  Hyde  Park ;  for  Johnstone 
was  a  noted  fire-eater,  and  Burgoyne,  though  good- 
natured,  never  allowed  a  joke  to  go  too  far.1  It  may 
well  be  believed  that  things  were  still  worse  for  civilians 
who  had  no  better  title  to  a  respectful  hearing  than  an 
acquaintance  with  the  subject  of  debate,  and  a  desire  to 
place  their  views  fairly  and  briefly  before  their  colleagues. 
The  speeches  of  ex-governor  Pownall,  of  Alderman  Saw- 
bridge,  and  the  other  more  persistent  opponents  of  the 
ministerial  policy  were  seldom  allowed  to  die  a  natural 
death.  Burke  himself,  though  he  held  the  House  while 
addressing  it  on  bye-issues,  had  to  contend  against  noise 
and  ostentatious  impertinence  when  he  applied  himself 

1  During  a  contested  election  in  Lancashire  a  party  of  Burgoyne's 
political  opponents  met  in  a  bar-room,  and  devised  a  scheme  for  what 
they  described  as  "  trotting  the  General."  A  certain  James  Elton  pulled 
out  a  valuable  watch,  and  handed  it  to  Burgoyne's  servant,  with  the 
injunction  that  he  should  take  it  to  his  master,  and  request  him  to  say 
whether  he  could  tell  the  time  of  day.  Burgoyne  placed  the  watch  on  a 
tray  together  with  a  pair  of  pistols,  and  desired  his  man  to  bring  it  after 
him  to  the  inn  where  the  party  was  assembled.  He  went  round  the  circle 
asking  each  of  them  whether  he  was  the  owner  of  the  watch.  When  no 
one  claimed  it,  Burgoyne  turned  to  his  servant  and  said,  "  Since  the  watch 
belongs  to  none  of  these  gentlemen,  you  may  take  it  and  fob  it  in  remem- 
brance of  the  Swan  Inn  at  Bolton."  As  any  one  who  knew  old  Lan- 
cashire might  readily  believe,  the  real  owner  went  by  the  name  of  Jemmy 
Trotter  to  his  dying  hour. 


1 84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  the  main  question  of  the  Government  legislation. 
High-handed  tactics  are  often  at  the  time  successful. 
The  whole  batch  of  measures  —  including  a  bill  for 
removing  the  legal  difficulties  which  hitherto  had  pre- 
served the  American  householder  from  the  infliction  of 
having  soldiers  quartered  under  his  private  roof  —  were 
placed  on  the  Statute-book  without  abridgment  or  es- 
sential alteration. 

The  third  great  blunder  had  now  been  committed ; 
and,  as  in  the  two  former  cases,  the  effect  was  soon 
visible  in  a  shape  very  different  from  what  had  been 
expected.  The  despatch  of  the  troops  led  to  the  Boston 
massacre ;  the  imposition  and  retention  of  the  Tea-duty 
produced  the  world-famed  scene  in  Boston  harbour; 
and  the  result  of  the  four  penal  Acts  was  to  involve 
Great  Britain  in  an  unnecessary  and  unprofitable  war 
with  exactly  as  many  powerful  nations.  The  main 
responsibility  rested  with  the  Government  and  their 
followers ;  but  the  Opposition  were  not  free  from 
blame.  They  allowed  the  Address  in  reply  to  the 
royal  message  to  pass  unchallenged,  and  they  let  the 
Boston  Port  bill  go  through  all  its  stages  without  calling 
for  a  division.  They  voted  against  the  two  other  prin- 
cipal bills  on  the  third  reading,  with  about  as  much 
effect  as  if  the  governor  of  a  fortress  was  to  reserve  the 
fire  of  his  batteries  until  the  enemy  had  carried  their 
sap  beyond  the  counterscarp.  Cowed  by  the  aspect  of 
the  benches  in  front  of  them,  uncertain  as  to  the  feeling 
in  the  country,  and  afraid  to  put  it  to  the  test  by  giving 
a  vigorous  lead  to  those  wiser  tendencies  which  largely 
prevailed  in  the  great  commercial  centres,  they  made  a 
very  poor  fight  in  the  Commons.1  The  House  of  Lords 
almost  shone  by  comparison.  Rockingham,  who  wanted 
self-confidence  but  not  conviction,  put  force  enough  upon 
himself  to  take  a  prominent  part  in  the  debate ;  and  in 

1  "The  landed  property,  except  some  of  the  most  sensible,  are,  as 
natural,  for  violent  measures.  The  interest  of  the  commercial  part  is 
very  decidedly  on  the  other  side,  and  their  passions  are  taking  that  turn." 
Shelburne  wrote  thus  to  Chatham  as  early  as  April  the  Fourth,  1774. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  1 8 5 

private  he  spared  no  remonstrances  in  order  to  keep  in 
the  path  of  duty  those  among  his  friends  who  showed 
hesitation.  Lord  Chatham  was  despondent,  and  most 
unhappy.  "America,"  he  wrote,  "sits  heavy  on  my 
mind.  India  is  a  perpetual  source  of  regrets.  There, 
where  I  have  garnered  up  my  heart,  where  our  strength 
lay,  and  our  happiest  resources  presented  themselves,  it 
is  all  changed  into  danger,  weakness,  distraction,  and 
vulnerability."  He  was  not  well  enough  to  take  a  share 
in  the  earlier  discussions;  and  his  speech,  when  at  length 
he  broke  silence,  was  rather  a  funeral  oration  over 
the  departed  peace  and  security  of  the  Empire  than  a 
summons  to  political  conflict. 

But  men  do  not  look  to  the  Upper  House  for  the 
delay  and  mitigation  of  a  coercion  bill ;  and  the  Min- 
isters won  all  along  the  line  with  an  ease  which  sur- 
prised themselves,  and  even  their  royal  master,  who 
knew  the  probabilities  of  politics  as  well  as  any  man 
alive.  His  jubilation  had  no  bounds.  In  four  separate 
letters  he  could  not  find  an  adjective  short  of  "infinite  " 
to  express  the  measure  of  his  satisfaction  over  every  fresh 
proof  of  the  irresolution  displayed  by  the  Oppositions 
But  in  his  own  view  he  owed  them  no  thanks.  Their 
feebleness  and  futility,  (such  were  the  epithets  which 
he  applied  to  them,)  were  an  involuntary  tribute  to  the 
irresistible  excellence  of  the  ministerial  legislation,  and 
only  procured  them  his  disdain  without  detracting  any- 
thing from  his  displeasure.  So  far  from  being  touched 
by  their  submissive  conduct,  he  was  all  the  more  indig- 
nant if  ever  they  showed  a  spark  of  spirit.  When  they 
spoke  and  voted  in  favour  of  receiving  a  petition  from 
an  American  gentleman  in  London,  a  former  agent  for 
Massachusetts,  who  prayed  that  the  fate  of  the  colony 
might  not  be  finally  decided  until  letters  had  travelled 
to  and  fro  across  the  water,  the  King  pronounced  that 
the  Opposition  had  violated  the  laws  of  decency,  but 
that  nothing  better  was  to  be  expected  from  men  who 
were  reduced  to  such  low  shifts.  He  had  a  right  to 
enjoy  his  triumph.     By  sheer  strength  of  purpose  he 


1 86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

had  imposed  his  favourite  measures  on  the  Cabinet,  and 
the  Cabinet  had  carried  them  through  Parliament  as 
smoothly  as  —  before  Fox's  day  and  after  it,  though  not 
during  it  —  bills  for  the  restraint  or  the  suppression  of 
liberty  so  often  passed. 

Fox's  clay  was  not  yet.  Everybody  was  talking  about 
him ;  and  behind  his  back  little  was  said  that  was  com- 
plimentary, and  a  great  deal  that  was  abundantly  silly. 
But  some  veterans  of  public  life,  who  remembered  their 
own  mistakes  and  excesses  at  an  age  more  advanced 
than  his,  regarded  his  future  with  hope,  and  his  past 
with  amused  indulgence.  Chatham  had  his  notice 
called  to  the  tattle  which  represented  the  ex-Lord  of 
the  Treasury  as  a  premature  intriguer,  encouraged  in 
his  mutiny  by  certain  members  of  the  Cabinet,  who  in 
their  turn  had  acted  on  a  hint  from  the  exalted  quarter 
which  was  then  called  the  Closet.  "  The  part  of  Mr. 
Fox,"  wrote  the  old  statesman,  "must  naturally  beget 
speculations.  It  may  however  be  all  resolved,  without 
going  deeper,  into  youth  and  warm  blood."  At  this 
point  in  his  career,  (said  one  who  watched  him  narrowly 
and  not  unkindly,)  it  was  no  longer  a  question  of  shin- 
ing by  speeches,  for  he  could  scarce  outdo  what  he  had 
done  already.  The  work  which  lay  before  him  was  to 
retrieve  his  character  by  reforming  it,  to  practise  indus- 
try and  application,  and  to  court  instead  of  to  defy  man- 
kind.1 

If  Fox  was  to  be  of  use  to  his  generation,  his  posi- 
tion in  the  House  of  Commons  had  still  to  be  made ; 
and  of  that  no  one  was  more  conscious  than  himself. 
Sorrow  had  caused  him  to  think,  and  reflection  had 
brought  self-knowledge.  He  set  no  undue  store  on  the 
gifts  which  came  to  him  by  nature,  and  he  was  acutely 
aware  of  the  defects  which  were  in  full  proportion  to  his 
extraordinary  qualities.  Strong  in  the  unwonted  sensa- 
tion of  being  on  his  guard  and  his  good  behaviour,  he 
at  once  adopted  an  independent  but  not  a  pretentious 

1  Chatham  to  Shelburne,  March  6,  1774.  Last  Journals  of  lValJ>ole, 
February,  1774. 


THE  PENAL   LAWS  187 

attitude,  and  maintained  it  with  diligence,  forethought, 
moderation,  and  even  modesty.  Leaving,  as  he  safely 
could,  the  form  of  his  speaking  to  take  care  of  itself, 
he  devoted  his  exclusive  attention  to  the  substance  of 
it,  and  to  the  practical  effect  of  the  policy  which  he 
recommended.  He  began  by  a  protest  against  the 
determination  of  the  Speaker  to  exclude  strangers  from 
the  gallery,  so  that  a  series  of  debates,  which  were  to 
fix  the  destinies  of  the  English-speaking  world,  might  be 
conducted  in  secret  conclave.  He  stoutly  objected  to 
the  clause  which  vested  the  responsibility  of  reopening 
Boston  harbour,  whenever  the  time  came  for  it,  with 
the  Crown  instead  of  with  Parliament.  When,  by  way 
of  answer,  he  was  accused  of  desiring  to  rob  the  King 
of  his  most  valued  prerogative,  the  opportunity  of  show- 
ing mercy,  he  allowed  the  courtly  argument  to  pass  with- 
out satirical  comment.  He  contented  himself  with  in- 
sisting that  his  motion  to  omit  that  clause,  together 
with  another  which  was  more  questionable  still,  should 
be  put  and  negatived ;  in  order  that  it  might  stand  on 
record  in  the  journals  how,  amidst  the  general  panic,  at 
least  one  member  of  Parliament  had  objected  to  some- 
thing which  the  Government  had  demanded. 

Fox  spoke  briefly,  but  not  infrequently,  on  the  other 
bills  relating  to  America ;  more  especially  when  their 
details  were  being  arranged  in  Committee.  On  the 
nineteenth  of  April  the  House  of  Commons  considered 
a  motion  to  repeal  the  Tea-duty,  which  was  brought 
forward  by  a  private  member.  Burke  signalised  the 
evening  by  a  splendid  oration.  Assisted  by  a  compari- 
son of  the  notes  furtively  taken  by  various  honourable 
gentlemen  in  the  crown  of  their  hats,  he  subsequently 
wrote  it  out  from  memory,  and  saved  it  for  a  world 
which  must  otherwise  have  been  the  poorer.  The 
Government  supporters  would  have  refused  to  listen  to 
Cicero  denouncing  Antony,  if  the  performance  had 
trenched  upon  the  Government  time ;  but,  as  it  was  an 
off-night,  they  gave  themselves  up  with  a  clear  con- 
science for  two  livelong  hours  to  the  enjoyment  of  the 


1 88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

speech.  Among  other  notable  passages  it  contained  a 
biographical  account  of  Charles  Townshend  as  copious 
as  the  discourse  of  an  incoming  French  Academician 
over  his  deceased  predecessor.  Even  after  such  a  feast 
of  rhetoric  they  were  willing  to  hear  Charles  Fox, 
though  they  would  hear  no  one  else  on  the  same  side. 
The  latest  words  of  reason  which  the  House  accepted 
before  it  went  to  a  division,  (and  both  Barre  and  Bur- 
goyne  tried  to  address  it,)  were  those  in  which  the  young 
man  defined  the  case  in  language  as  plain  as  his  exposi- 
tion of  it  was  accurate  and  adequate.  A  tax,  he  said, 
could  only  be  laid  for  three  purposes :  as  a  commercial 
regulation,  for  the  raising  of  revenue,  or  in  order  to 
assert  a  right.  As  to  the  first  two  purposes,  the  Minister 
denied  that  he  had  them  even  in  mind ;  while  the  so- 
called  right  of  taxation  was  asserted  with  the  intention 
of  justifying  an  armed  interference  on  the  part  of  Great 
Britain,  with  the  inevitable  consequence  of  irritating  the 
American  colonies  into  open  rebellion. 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life  Fox  looked  only  to  what 
was  just  and  prudent  in  speech  and  action;  and  he  did 
not  endeavour  or  expect  to  attract  a  personal  following. 
One  sworn  partisan  he  always  was  sure  of  having.  Poor 
Stephen's  heart  was  in  the  right  place  in  his  great  body. 
He  stood  by  his  brother  through  the  darkest  hour  of  his 
fortunes,  and  attended  him  gallantly  and  jauntily  in  his 
wise  endeavours,  as  he  had  so  often  done  in  his  hare- 
brained courses.  In  the  House,  which  was  almost 
identical  with  the  fashionable  world,  Stephen  was  some- 
thing of  a  favourite  in  spite  of  his  faults,  and  even,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  on  account  of  them.  He  took  his  share 
in  the  uphill  conflict ;  and  on  the  second  of  May,  when 
the  Charter  of  Massachusetts  was  under  consideration, 
he  delivered  himself  in  phrases  which  were  worthy  of 
his  father's  son  in  their  manly  common  sense,  and  of  his 
son's  father  in  their  broad  humanity.  "  I  rise,  sir,"  he 
said,  "with  an  utter  detestation  and  abhorrence  of  the 
present  measures.  We  are  either  to  treat  the  Americans 
as  subjects  or  as  rebels.     If  we  treat  them  as  subjects, 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  1 89 

the  bill  goes  too  far;  if  as  rebels,  it  does  not  go  far 
enough.  We  have  refused  to  hear  the  parties  in  their 
defence,  and  we  are  going  to  destroy  their  charter 
without  knowing  the  constitution  of  their  Govern- 
ment." 

Those  were  the  last  sentences  which  Stephen  Fox  is 
known  to  have  uttered  in  public ;  for  in  two  months  he 
was  a  peer,  and  within  seven  months  he  died.  By  that 
time  Charles  had  made  good  his  ground  in  public  esti- 
mation, and  had  secured  a  solid  base  of  operations  from 
which  he  was  soon  to  advance  fast  and  far.  Parliament 
was  very  ready  to  forget  and  forgive  in  the  case  of  a  scion 
of  an  old  and  famous  parliamentary  family.  He  had  not 
tried  to  shine;  he  had  placed  to  his  account  no  tran- 
scendent effort;  and  his  colleagues  liked  him  all  the 
better  for  his  self-suppression,  and  admired  him  none 
the  less.  But,  whenever  he  addressed  the  House,  he 
had  proved  himself  its  potential  master.  Amidst  a 
tempest  of  violence  and  prejudice  he  alone  among  the 
opponents  of  the  Government  never  condescended  to 
begin  with  an  apology,  and  never  sate  down  without 
having  driven  home  all  that  he  wished  to  say.  He  had 
vindicated  his  right  to  argue  a  coercion  bill  as  he  would 
have  argued  anything  else,  refusing  to  recognise  the 
hackneyed  plea  of  public  safety  as  an  excuse  for  hurry 
and  slovenliness,  and  sturdily  declining  to  mend  his 
pace  under  the  pressure  of  public  anger.  Having 
espoused  the  right  cause,  and  fought  for  it  like  one  who 
was  not  ashamed  of  it,  he  brought  an  increased  reputa- 
tion and  an  established  authority  out  of  as  sorry  a  busi- 
ness as  Parliament  had  ever  been  engaged  in.  But  he 
was  powerless  to  amend  the  Government  measures. 
The  whole  of  the  baleful  harvest  was  safely  garnered; 
and  —  amidst  the  Acts  for  paving  and  lighting  streets, 
and  for  widening  and  repairing  county  roads,  with 
which  the  Statute-book  of  1774,  like  any  other,  is 
crowded  —  we  still  may  read,  in  faded  black  and  dingy 
white,  the  dry  and  conventional  text  of  those  famous 
laws  that  in  their  day  set  half  the  world  on  fire. 


190  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

For  the  matter  did  not  end  when  the  bills  had  received 
the  Royal  Assent.  There  was  an  opposition  beyond 
the  seas  which  was  not  kept  from  speaking  out  by  the 
fear  of  being  called  factious.  The  same  ships  that  took 
over  copies  of  the  Port  Act,  carried  a  parcel  of  Bibles 
and  prayer-books  which  Dartmouth  entrusted  for  distri- 
bution to  a  clergyman  of  Philadelphia,  who  wrote  to 
report  the  effect  produced  upon  public  opinion  by  the 
two  consignments.  Personally  the  good  man  expressed 
nothing  but  gratitude  towards  his  Lordship.  The  books 
had  been  bestowed  on  those  for  whom  they  were  in- 
tended, and  there  was  every  sign  that  they  would  be 
blessed  to  the  congregation.  But  consternation  pre- 
vailed in  Boston  on  hearing  that  their  harbour  was  to 
be  blocked  up,  and  all  the  colonies  seemed  to  be  united 
in  opposing  the  authority  of  Parliament.1 

The  worthy  divine  was  correct  in  his  reading  of  the 
situation.  But  though  a  Pennsylvanian,  whose  judg- 
ment was  unclouded  by  the  imminence  of  a  terrible  and 
incalculable  danger,  might  already  regard  it  as  certain 
that  the  whole  of  America  would  make  common  cause, 
the  future  presented  itself  under  a  more  dubious  aspect 
to  dwellers  in  the  threatened  city.  "  We  have  not  men 
fit  for  the  times,"  said  John  Adams  in  his  private  diary. 
"  We  are  deficient  in  genius,  in  education,  in  travel,  in 
fortune,  in  everything.  I  feel  unutterable  anxiety. 
God  grant  us  wisdom  and  fortitude!  Should  this  coun- 
try submit,  what  infamy  and  ruin !  Death,  in  any  form, 
is  less  terrible."  That  was  written  for  his  own  eyes 
alone;  but  the  hour  was  too  grave,  and  the  men  and 
the  women  around  him  too  clear-sighted  and  resolute, 
for  him  to  mince  the  truth  even  when  writing  to  others. 
He  reminded  James  Warren  of  Plymouth,  who  was  as 
deep  in  the  troubled  waters  as  himself,  of  the  ugly  his- 
torical fact  that  people  circumstanced  like  them  had 
seldom  grown  old,  or  died  in  their  beds.  And  to  his 
wife  he  wrote :  "  We  live,  my  dear  soul,  in  an  age  of 

1  The  Revd.  William  Stringer  to  Lord  Dartmouth,  May  14,  1774. 


ATTITUDE    OF   THE    COLONIES 


191 


trial.  What  will  be  the  consequence  I  know  not  The 
town  of  Boston,  for  aught  I  can  see,  must  suffer  martyr- 
dom. Our  principal  consolation  is  that  it  dies  in  a  noble 
cause."  That  was  the  spirit  in  which  the  cowards  of 
Boston  met  the  announcement  that  they  must  bow  their 
heads  to  the  yoke,  or  fight  against  such  odds  as  the 
world  had  never  seen.  The  last  time  that  Great  Britain 
had  exerted  her  full  strength,  she  had  beaten  the  French 
by  land  on  three  continents;  had  established  over 
France  and  Spain  together  an  immeasurable  superiority 
at  sea;  and  had  secured  for  herself  everything  in  both 
hemispheres  which  was  best  worth  taking.  Boston,  on 
the  other  hand,  contained  five  and  thirty  hundred  able- 
bodied  citizens;  and,  in  the  view  of  her  enemies,  no  popu- 
lation was  ever  composed  of  worse  men  and  poorer 
creatures.  So  George  the  Third,  his  Ministers,  and  his 
army  firmly  believed ;  and  they  engaged  in  the  struggle 
armed  with  all  the  moral  advantage  which  such  a  con- 
viction gives. 

Before  America  could  be  loyal  to  the  people  of  Boston, 
it  had  first  to  be  shown  whether  the  people  of  Boston 
were  true  to  themselves.  On  the  tenth  of  May  the  in- 
telligence arrived  that  the  Assembly  was  henceforward 
to  sit,  and  the  business  of  administration  to  be  carried 
on,  in  the  town  of  Salem ;  and  that  the  Custom-house 
was  to  be  removed  to  Marblehead,  the  principal  landing 
place  in  Salem  harbour.  Three  days  afterwards  Gen- 
eral Gage  arrived  in  Massachusetts  Bay,  with  full  powers 
as  civil  governor  of  the  colony,  and  as  Commander-in- 
Chief  for  the  whole  continent.  During  those  three  days 
the  Committees  of  Correspondence  which  represented 
Boston  and  eight  neighbouring  villages  had  quietly,  and 
rather  sadly,  taken  up  the  glove  which  the  giant  Empire 
had  contemptuously  flung  to  them.  They  had  got  ready 
their  appeal  to  all  the  Assemblies  of  the  continent,  in- 
viting a  universal  suspension  of  exports  and  imports ; 
promising  to  suffer  for  America  with  a  becoming  forti- 
tude ;  confessing  that  singly  they  might  find  their  trial 
too  severe ;  and  entreating  that  they  might  not  be  left 


192  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  struggle  alone,  when  the  very  existence  of  every 
colony,  as  a  free  people,  depended  upon  the  event. 
Brave  words  they  were,  and  the  inditing  of  them  at 
such  a  moment  was  in  itself  a  deed ;  but  something 
more,  than  pen  and  ink  was  required  to  parry  the  blows 
which  were  now  showered  upon  the  town,  and  upon  the 
State  of  which  it  had  already  ceased  to  be  the  capital. 

On  the  first  of  June  the  blockade  of  the  harbour  was 
proclaimed,  and  the  ruin  and  starvation  of  Boston  at 
once  began.  The  industry  of  a  place  which  lived  by 
building,  sailing,  freighting,  and  unloading  ships  was 
annihilated  in  a  single  moment.  The  population,  which 
had  fed  itself  from  the  sea,  would  now  have  to  subsist 
on  the  bounty  of  others,  conveyed  across  great  distances 
by  a  hastily  devised  system  of  land-carriage  in  a  district 
where  the  means  of  locomotion  were  unequal  to  such  a 
burden.  A  city  which  conducted  its  internal  communi- 
cations by  boat  almost  as  much  as  Venice,  and  quite  as 
much  as  Stockholm,  was  henceforward  divided  into  as 
many  isolated  quarters  as  there  were  suburbs  with  salt 
or  brackish  water  lying  between  them.  "The  law," 
Mr.  Bancroft  writes  in  his  History,  "was  executed  with 
a  rigour  that  went  beyond  the  intentions  of  its  authors. 
Not  a  scow  could  be  manned  by  oars  to  bring  an  ox  or 
a  sheep  or  a  bundle  of  hay  from  the  islands.  All  water 
carriage  from  pier  to  pier,  though  but  of  lumber  or 
bricks  or  kine,  was  forbidden.  The  boats  that  plied 
between  Boston  and  Charlestown  could  not  ferry  a 
parcel  of  goods  across  Charles  River.  The  fishermen 
of  Marblehead,  when  they  bestowed  quintals  of  dried 
fish  on  the  poor  of  Boston,  were  obliged  to  transport 
their  offerings  in  waggons  by  a  circuit  of  thirty  miles."  x 
Lord  North,  when  he  pledged  himself  to  place  Boston 
at  a  distance  of  seventeen  miles  from  the  sea,  had  been 
almost  twice  as  good  as  his  word. 

.In  a  fortnight's  time,  as  soon  as  the  pinch  began  to  be 
felt,  the  troops  came  back  into  the  town,  sore  and  surly, 

1  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States  of  America,  Epoch  Third, 
chapter  iv. 


ATTITUDE    OF  THE    COLONIES 


193 


and  a  standing  camp  for  two  battalions  was  established 
on  Boston  Common.  Relief,  or  hope  of  relief,  there  was 
none.  Long  before  the  summer  was  over  the  constitu- 
tion would  be  abolished ;  the  old  Councillors  would  be 
displaced  by  Government  nominees;  and  criminal  and 
civil  cases  would  be  tried  by  judges  whose  salaries  the 
Crown  paid,  and  by  juries  which  the  Crown  had  packed. 
The  right  of  petition  remained;  but  it  was  worth  less 
than  nothing.  A  respectful  statement  of  abuses,  and 
a  humble  prayer  for  their  redress,  was  regarded  by  the 
King  and  the  Cabinet  as  a  form  of  treason  all  the  more 
offensive  because  it  could  not  be  punished  by  law. 
"When  I  see,"  said  Franklin,  "that  complaints  of  griev- 
ances are  so  odious  to  Government  that  even  the  mere 
pipe  which  conveys  them  becomes  obnoxious,  I  am  at 
a  loss  to  know  how  peace  and  union  are  to  be  maintained 
or  restored."  A  few  weeks,  or  days,  remained  in  which 
the  free  voice  of  the  country  could  still  be  heard ;  and 
there  were  those  who  intended  to  take  good  care  that  its 
latest  accents  should  mean  something.  Early  in  June 
the  Assembly  met  at  Salem.  On  the  seventeenth  of  the 
month  the  House,  behind  locked  doors,  and  with  an 
attendance  larger  by  a  score  than  any  that  had  yet  been 
known,  took  into  consideration  the  question  of  inviting  the 
thirteen  colonies  to  a  general  Congress.  The  Governor's 
secretary,  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  keyhole,  read  a 
message  proclaiming  that  the  Assembly  was  dissolved ; 
but,  when  those  who  had  entered  the  room  as  senators 
filed  out  in  their  character  of  private  citizens,  the  work 
was  past  undoing.  The  place  named  for  the  Congress 
was  Philadelphia  ;  the  date  was  to  be  the  first  of  Septem- 
ber ;  and  the  five  delegates  for  Massachusetts  had  all 
been  duly  elected,  including  the  pair  of  statesmen  whom 
Massachusetts  Tories,  by  way  of  depreciation,  pleased 
themselves  by  calling  the  brace  of  Adamses.1 

1  The  name  was  started  by  an  old  ex-governor  in  1770,  in  a  sentence 
which  began  with  the  flavour  of  a  Biblical  reminiscence,  but  ran  off  into 
another  strain.  "  Mr.  Cushing  I  know,  and  Mr.  Hancock  I  know;  but 
where  the  devil  this  brace  of  Adamses  came  from  I  know  not." 


194  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  note  had  been  sounded  sharp  and  clear,  and  the 
response  followed  like  an  echo.  The  first  to  rally  were 
those  who  had  the  most  to  gain  by  standing  aloof. 
James  the  Second,  in  the  matter  of  the  Declaration  of 
Indulgence,  had  failed  to  discover  a  bribe  which  would 
tempt  the  English  Nonconformists  to  assist  him  in  per- 
secuting even  those  who  had  persecuted  them  ;  and  their 
descendants  across  the  seas  had  not  degenerated.  In 
Marblehead  and  Salem  together  there  were  not  found 
eighty  individuals,  all  told,  who  cared  to  play  the  part  of 
wreckers  in  the  disaster  which  had  befallen  the  good 
ship  Boston.  A  much  larger  number  of  their  fellow- 
townsmen,  in  an  address  to  General  Gage,  repudiated  any 
intention  of  being  seduced  by  the  prospect  of  their  own 
advantage  into  complicity  with  a  course  of  action  which, 
whether  unjust  or  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
Government,  would  on  their  own  part  be  to  the  last 
degree  ungracious  and  unfriendly.  "We  must,"  they 
said,  "be  lost  to  all  feelings  of  humanity,  could  we  in- 
dulge one  thought  to  raise  our  fortunes  on  the  ruin  of  our 
suffering  neighbours."  To  the  Boston  merchants  they 
offered  the  gratuitous  use  of  their  wharves  and  ware- 
houses, and  promised  to  lade  and  unlade  Boston  goods 
for  nothing.  And  indeed  they  very  soon  took  the  oppor- 
tunity of  the  arrival  from  London  of  a  bark  with  chests 
of  tea  on  board  to  treat  the  cargo  in  Boston  fashion,  and 
so  disqualify  themselves  for  any  further  marks  of  Royal 
and  Ministerial  favour. 

Salem  and  Marblehead  were  forced  by  their  circum- 
stances to  declare  themselves  at  once;  and,  as  the 
provisions  of  the  Act  for  regulating  the  government  of 
Massachusetts  were  successively  put  in  force,  the  town- 
ships of  the  colony,  one  after  another,  eagerly  followed 
suit.  The  new  councillors  were  appointed  on  the  King's 
writ  of  mandamus,  and  twenty-five  among  them  accepted 
the  office.  It  was  the  worst  day's  work  they  had  ever 
done  for  themselves ;  for  their  cause  ;  and  for  the  peace, 
and  in  some  unfortunate  cases  for  the  fair  reputation, 
of  the  neighbourhood  in  which  they  severally  resided. 


ATTITUDE   OF  THE   COLONIES 


195 


For  popular  feeling  ran  high  and  fierce ;  and  their 
countrymen  were  determined  that  they  should  not  serve, 
to  whatever  lengths  it  might  be  necessary  to  go  in  order 
to  prevent  them.  Two  thousand  men  marched  in  com- 
panies on  to  the  common  at  Worcester,  escorting  one  of 
their  townsmen  whose  abilities  and  personal  popularity 
had  recommended  him  to  the  notice  of  the  Government, 
and  formed  a  hollow  square  around  him  while,  with  un- 
covered head,  he  read  the  resignation  of  his  seat  at  the 
council  board.  George  Watson  of  Plymouth,  who,  in  the 
stately  language  of  the  day,  "  possessed  almost  every 
virtue  that  can  adorn  and  dignify  the  human  character," 
made  known  his  intention  of  assuming  the  proffered 
dignity.  On  the  next  Sunday  forenoon,  when  he  took 
his  accustomed  place  in  the  meeting-house,  his  friends 
and  familiar  associates  put  on  their  hats  and  walked  out 
beneath  the  eyes  of  the  congregation.  As  they  passed 
him  he  bent  his  head  over  the  handle  of  his  cane ;  and, 
when  the  time  arrived,  he  declined  the  oath  of  qualifica- 
tion. More  violent  methods,  which  in  certain  cases  did 
not  stop  short  of  grotesque  and  even  brutal  horseplay, 
were  employed  against  less  respected  or  more  deter- 
mined men.  Of  thirty-six  who  had  received  the  King's 
summons,  the  majority  either  refused  obedience  from 
the  first,  or  were  persuaded  or  intimidated  into  withdraw- 
ing their  consent  to  join  the  Council.  The  rest  took  sanct- 
uary with  the  garrison  in  Boston  ;  and  the  tidings  which 
came  from  their  homes  in  the  country  districts  made  it 
certain  that  they  would  do  very  well  to  stay  there. 

The  immediate  vicinity  of  the  soldiers  was  a  preven- 
tive against  outrages  of  which  the  best  of  the  patriots 
were  heartily  ashamed  ;  but  no  body  of  troops  could  be 
large  enough,  or  near  enough,  to  deter  New  Englanders 
from  acting  as  if  they  still  possessed  those  municipal 
rights  of  which  they  had  been  deprived  without  a  hear- 
ing. General  Gage  issued  a  proclamation  warning  all 
persons  against  attending  town-meetings ;  and  town- 
meetings  were  held  regularly,  and  were  attended  by 
larger  numbers  than  ever.     The  men  of  Salem,  towards 


196  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

whom  he  had  special  reasons  for  being  unwilling  to  pro- 
ceed to  extremities,  walked  into  the  Town-house  under 
his  eyes,  and  between  footways  lined  with  his  soldiers. 
Boston,  whose  character  in  official  quarters  had  long 
been  gone,  was  obliged  to  be  more  cautious.  When 
called  to  account  by  the  Governor,  the  Selectmen  ad- 
mitted that  a  meeting  had  been  held  ;  but  it  was  a  meet- 
ing (so  they  argued)  which  had  been  adjourned  from  a 
date  anterior  to  the  time  when  the  Act  came  into  force. 
Gage,  who  saw  that,  if  this  theory  was  accepted,  the  same 
meeting  by  means  of  repeated  adjournments  might  be 
kept  alive  till  the  end  of  the  century,  reported  the 
matter  to  his  Council.  The  new  Councillors  pronounced 
themselves  unable  to  advise  him  on  a  point  of  law,  — 
that  law  which  already  had  ceased  to  have  force  beyond 
the  reach  of  a  British  bayonet ;  — but  they  took  occasion 
to  lay  before  him  the  disordered  condition  of  the  prov- 
ince, and  the  cruel  plight  to  which  his  policy  had  re- 
duced themselves. 

When  the  day  came  round  for  the  Courts  of  Justice 
to  sit  in  their  remodelled  shape,  the  Judges  were  treated 
more  tenderly  as  regarded  their  persons  than  the  man- 
damus councillors,  but  with  quite  as  little  reverence 
for  their  office.  They  took  their  seats  at  Boston  only 
to  learn  that  those  citizens  who  had  been  returned  as 
jurors  one  and  all  refused  the  oath.  A  great  multitude 
marched  into  Springfield,  with  drums  and  trumpets, 
and  hoisted  a  black  flag  over  the  Court-house,  as  a  sign 
of  what  any  one  might  expect  who  entered  it  in  an  offi- 
cial capacity.  At  Worcester  the  members  of  the  tribunal 
with  all  their  staff  walked  in  procession,  safe  and  sorry,, 
through  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  street  lined  on  each  side 
by  people  drawn  up  six  deep.  These  militia-men  (for 
such  they  were)  had  their  company  officers  to  command 
them,  and  wanted  nothing  to  make  them  a  military 
force  except  the  fire-arms  which  were  standing  ready 
at  home,  and  which  two  out  of  every  three  amongst 
them  could  handle  more  effectively  than  an  average 
European  soldier.     Wherever  the  Judges  went,  if  once 


ATTITUDE   OF  THE   COLONIES  197 

they  were  fairly  inside  a  town,  they  were  not  allowed 
to  leave  it  until  they  had  plighted  their  honour  that 
they  would  depart  without  transacting  any  legal  busi- 
ness. After  a  succession  of  such  experiences  the  Chief 
Justice  and  his  colleagues  waited  upon  the  Governor, 
and  represented  to  him  that  they  must  abandon  the 
pretence  of  exercising  their  functions  in  a  Province 
where  there  were  no  jurymen  to  listen  to  their  charges,  > 
and  where  they  could  not  even  sit  in  court  to  do  noth- 
ing unless  the  approaches  were  guarded  by  the  best 
part  of  a  brigade  of  British  infantry. 

The  process  of  bringing  Massachusetts  into  line  with 
the  Revolution  was  harsh,  and  sometimes  ruthless.  So 
far  as  any  public  opinion  opposed  to  their  own  was  in 
question,  the  patriots  went  on  the  principle  of  making 
the  Province  a  solitude,  and  calling  it  unanimity.  The 
earliest  sufferers  were  Government  servants.  Clark 
Chandler,  the  Registrar  of  Probate  at  Worcester,  had 
entered  on  the  local  records  a  remonstrance  against  ac- 
tion taken  by  the  more  advanced  politicians  among  the 
citizens.  He  was  called  upon  in  open  town-meeting  to 
erase  the  inscription  from  the  books ;  and  when  he 
showed  signs  of  reluctance,  his  fingers  were  dipped  in 
ink,  and  drawn  to  and  fro  across  the  page.  The  chaise 
of  Benjamin  Hallowell,  a  Commissioner  of  Customs, 
was  pursued  into  Boston  at  a  gallop  by  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  mounted  men.  Jonathan  Sewall  is 
known  in  the  school  histories  of  America  as  the  recipient 
of  a  famous  confidence.  It  was  to  him  that  John  Adams, 
after  they  had  travelled  together  as  far  as  the  parting 
of  the  ways,  used  those  words  of  spirited  tautology : 
"  Swim  or  sink,  live  or  die,  survive  or  perish  with  my 
country  is  my  unalterable  determination."  Unfortu- 
nately for  himself,  Sewall  was  a  law  officer  of  the 
Crown  as  well  as  a  bosom  friend  of  the  Crown's  adver- 
sary. His  elegant  house  in  Cambridge  was  attacked 
by  the  mob.  He  was  forced  to  retire  to  Boston,  and 
subsequently  to  Europe,  where,  after  long  struggles  and 
many  sorrows,  he  died  of  a  broken  heart. 


I98  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

These  were  official  people ;  but  their  fate  was  shared 
by  private  gentlemen  whose  sins  against  liberty  did  not 
go  beyond  some  rather  violent  and  foolish  ebullitions  of 
speech.  This  one  had  hoped  that  the  rebels  would 
swing  for  it.  That  one  had  said  that  he  should  be  glad 
to  see  the  blood  streaming  from  the  hearts  of  the  popu- 
lar leaders ;  and,  in  a  milder  mood,  had  contented  him- 
self with  wishing  that  they  might  become  turnspits  in 
the  kitchens  of  the  English  nobility.  Another,  while  it 
was  still  a  question  whether  Massachusetts  should  resist 
or  accept  her  punishment  tractably,  had  a  child  bap- 
tized by  the  name  of  "  Submit."  Angry  and  idle  —  for 
their  life  was  now  and  henceforward  one  of  enforced 
and  unwelcome  leisure — they  talked  recklessly;  though 
most  of  them  would  not  of  their  own  accord  have  hurt 
a  fly,  let  alone  a  fellow-citizen.  They  crowded  the  inns 
and  boarding-houses  of  Boston,  and  the  spare  chambers 
of  their  city  friends ;  lingering  on  the  very  edge  of  the 
ocean  before  they  started  on  a  much  longer  flight,  from 
which  for  most  of  them  there  was  no  returning. 

Among  those  who  had  been  expelled  from  their 
homes  were  some  of  the  richest  landowners  in  the  prov- 
ince, —  men  who  would  have  added  respectability  and 
distinction  to  any  aristocracy  in  the  world.  Colonel 
Saltonstall  was  a  good  soldier,  a  just  magistrate,  and  a 
kind  neighbour ;  but  the  mob  of  his  district  would  not 
allow  him  to  stay,  and  he  went  first  to  Boston,  and  then 
into  exile.  He  refused  to  bear  arms  for  the  Crown, 
against  so  many  old  friends  who  would  gladly  have 
marched  and  fought  under  him  if  he  had  found  it  in  his 
conscience  to  take  service  with  the  Continental  army. 
He  felt  to  the  full  such  consolation  as  was  afforded  by 
the  thought  that  he  had  done  nothing  with  which  to 
reproach  himself.  "  I  have  had  more  satisfaction,"  he 
wrote  from  England,  "  in  a  private  life  here  than  I 
should  have  had  in  being  next  in  command  to  General 
Washington."  The  Vassalls  were  a  family  of  worth 
and  honour,  one  of  whom  was  grandfather  of  the  Lady 
Holland  who  kept  a  salon  and  a  dining-table  for  the 


ATTITUDE    OF   THE    COLONIES  1 99 

Whigs  of  the  great  Reform  Bill.  John  Vassall  of  Cam- 
bridge had  no  choice  but  to  cross  the  seas  with  his 
kindred.  His  great  property  in  Massachusetts  was  ulti- 
mately confiscated,  after  having  been  subjected  to  a 
course  of  systematised  spoliation.  His  mansion-house 
at  Cambridge  became  the  headquarters  of  the  Amer- 
ican army.  The  Committee  of  Safety  published  a  suc- 
cession of  orders,  carefully  regulating  the  distribution 
of  the  produce  on  his  estate ;  and  the  Provincial  Con- 
gress solemnly  voted  half  a  pint  of  rum  a  day  to  the 
persons  employed  on  cutting  his  crops,  and  those  of  his 
fellow-refugees.  Isaac  Royall  of  Medford,  to  whom 
hospitality  was  a  passion,  and  the  affection  of  all 
around  him,  high  and  low,  the  prize  which  he  coveted, 
did  not  escape  banishment  and  proscription.  It  was 
lightly  but  cruelly  said  by  his  political  opponents  that 
to  carry  on  his  farms  in  his  absence  was  not  an  easy 
matter;  "for  the  honest  man's  scythe  refused  to  cut 
Tory  grass,  and  his  oxen  to  turn  a  Tory  furrow."  Dur- 
ing the  dreary  years  which  lay  before  him,  his  cherished 
wish  was  to  be  buried  in  Massachusetts ;  but  that  boon 
was  denied  him.  He  died  in  England,  before  the  war 
was  over,  bequeathing  two  thousand  acres  of  his  neg- 
lected soil  to  endow  a  Chair  in  the  famous  university  of 
his  native  province  which  he  himself  was  never  per- 
mitted to  revisit. 

Women,  whatever  might  be  their  opinions,  were  not 
uncivilly  treated.  The  habitual  chivalry  of  Americans 
was  extended  to  every  applicant  for  the  benefit  of  it, 
even  if  she  might  not  always  have  been  the  most  esti- 
mable of  her  sex.  There  was  in  Massachusetts  a  dame 
of  quality,  who  once  had  a  face  which  contemporaries 
described  as  of  "  matchless  beauty,"  and  a  story  very 
closely  resembling  that  of  the  notorious  Lady  Hamilton. 
She  had  been  the  companion  of  a  wealthy  baronet, 
Collector  of  the  customs  for  the  Port  of  Boston.  Those 
customs,  with  the  license  accorded  to  favoured  place- 
holders before  the  Revolution,  he  had  contrived  to  col- 
lect while  residing  at  his  ease  in  the  South  of  Europe. 


200  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  was  frightened  into  marriage  by  the  earthquake  of 
Lisbon ;  and  after  his  death  the  widow  returned  to 
America,  to  her  late  husband's  country  house,  where 
he  had  maintained  what,  for  the  New  England  of  that 
day,  was  a  grand  and  lavish  establishment.  When  the 
troubles  grew  serious  she  was  alarmed  by  the  attitude 
of  the  rural  population,  and  asked  leave  to  retire  to 
Boston.  The  Provincial  Congress  furnished  her  with 
an  escort,  and  passed  a  special  Resolution  permitting 
her  to  take  into  the  city  her  horses,  carriages,  live-stock, 
trunks,  bedding,  and  provisions.  They  detained  noth- 
ing of  hers  except  arms  and  ammunition,  for  which  the 
lady  had  little  use,  and  the  patriots  much.  She  got 
safe  into  Boston,  and  safe  out  of  it  to  England,  where 
she  closed  her  career  as  the  wife  of  a  county  banker. 

Amenities  such  as  these  were  not  for  every  day  or 
every  person.  There  was  one  class  of  Government 
partisans  which,  in  particular,  fared  very  badly.  It  was 
frequently  the  case  that  a  clergyman,  accustomed  to  deal 
out  instruction,  held  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  inform 
laymen  about  matters  in  which  they  did  not  desire  his 
guidance.  Old  Doctor  Byles  of  Boston,  though  a  stout 
loyalist,  had  the  good  sense  never  to  bring  affairs  of 
state  inside  the  porch  of  his  church.  "  In  the  first  place," 
he  told  his  people,  "I  do  not  understand  politics.  In 
the  second  place  you  all  do,  every  man  and  mother's 
son  of  you.  In  the  third  place  you  have  politics  all 
the  week,  so  pray  let  one  day  in  the  seven  be  devoted 
to  religion.  In  the  fourth  place  I  am  engaged  on  infi- 
nitely higher  work.  Name  to  me  any  subject  of  more 
consequence  than  the  truth  I  bring  to  you,  and  I  will 
preach  on  it  the  next  Sabbath."  That  was  his  theory 
of  duty ;  and  it  carried  him  unhurt,  though  not  unthreat- 
ened,  over  the  worst  of  the  bad  times.  He  continued 
to  reside,  through  the  war  and  for  years  after,  in  his 
native  city ;  and  he  kept  it  alive  by  excellent  jokes 
which  no  one  relished  more  than  the  Whig  officials  who 
were  usually  the  subjects  of  them.  But  others  of  his 
cloth   were   less   prudent.     Every  minister  of   religion 


ATTITUDE    OF  THE    COLONIES  201 

who  opposed  the  Crown  was  inciting  his  congregation 
to  armed  revolt  in  the  vein  and  often  with  the  very 
phrases  of  the  Old  Testament  Prophets ;  and  for  the 
ministers  who  supported  the  Crown  to  keep  unbroken 
silence  was  more  than  human  or  clerical  nature  could 
endure.  They  delivered  their  souls,  and  were  not  long 
in  discovering  that  those  to  whom  they  preached  had 
no  attribute  of  a  flock  about  them  except  the  name. 
One  outspoken  clergyman  had  bullets  fired  into  his 
house.  The  pulpit  of  another  was  nailed  up,  and  with 
some  excuse,  for  he  had  announced  from  it  that  colo- 
nists who  were  shot  by  the  royal  soldiers  would  find 
that  their  punishment  did  not  end  in  this  life.  A  third, 
whose  hearers  complained  that  "  his  Toryism  was  most 
offensive,"  was  put  into  the  village  pound  and  had 
herrings  thrown  over  for  him  to  eat.  The  physicians 
as  a  rule  adhered  to  the  Crown ;  but,  whatever  might 
be  the  case  with  the  spiritual  needs  of  parishioners,  the 
bodily  health  of  citizens,  actual  and  prospective,  was 
not  to  be  trifled  with.  The  person  of  a  medical  man 
was  very  generally  respected,  and  his  property  spared. 
The  most  dutiful  Son  of  Liberty  was  willing  to  excuse 
his  own  forbearance  by  the  explanation  that  doctors 
were  indebted  to  their  immunity  from  disciplinary  treat- 
ment to  "the  exigencies  of  the  ladies." 

Massachusetts  had  stood  by  Boston ;  and  it  was  soon 
evident  that  all  the  other  colonies  would  stand  by 
Massachusetts.  The  Port  Act  was  carried  through  the 
American  townships  as  swiftly  as  the  rumour  of  a  great 
disaster  pervades  the  bazaars  of  India.  It  was  printed 
on  mourning  paper,  with  a  black  border ;  it  was  cried 
about  the  streets  as  a  Barbarous  Murder ;  it  was  solemnly 
burned  in  the  presence  of  vast  crowds  of  people.  The 
first  of  June  was  kept  in  Philadelphia  with  peals  of  muf- 
fled bells,  and  colours  half-mast  high  on  the  river,  and 
the  shutters  up  from  dawn  to  dark  in  ninety  houses  out 
of  every  hundred.  The  Assembly  of  Virginia  set  the 
day  apart  for  humiliation,  prayer,  and  fasting.     But  the 


202  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

colonies  found  more  effectual  means  of  relieving  Boston 
than  by  sharing  her  abstinence.  South  Carolina  sent 
two  hundred  barrels  of  rice,  with  eight  hundred  more  to 
follow.  In  North  Carolina,  Wilmington  raised  two 
thousand  pounds  in  a  few  days,  —  the  sum  which  much 
about  the  same  time  a  fashionable  Club  was  spending 
at  Ranelagh  on  a  Masquerade  that  was  the  wonder  of 
the  London  season.1  To  convey  the  contributions  of 
the  little  seaport  a  ship  was  offered  freight  free,  and  a 
crew  volunteered  to  make  the  voyage  without  wages. 
The  less  remote  districts  of  New  England  kept  Boston 
supplied  with  portable  and  perishable  victuals ;  and  the 
class  of  food  which  could  travel  on  foot  came  over  many 
leagues  of  road  and  not  seldom  from  places  which  could 
badly  spare  it.  Two  hundred  and  fifty-eight  sheep  were 
driven  in  from  one  town  in  Connecticut,  and  two  hun- 
dred and  ninety  from  another.  Israel  Putnam  brought 
a  flock  of  six  or  seven  score  from  his  remote  parish,  and 
did  not  fail  to  show  himself  on  the  Common,  where  he 
could  enjoy  the  sight  of  more  soldiers  together  than  he 
had  seen  since  he  fought  by  Lord  Howe  at  Ticonderoga. 
The  British  officers,  who  liked  him  well,  suggested  that 
they  must  owe  the  pleasure  of  his  visit  to  his  having 
sniffed  powder  in  the  air.  They  told  him  that  he  very 
soon  might  have  it  to  his  heart's  content,  as  they  were 
expecting  twenty  ships  of  the  line  and  as  many  regi- 
ments from  England.  "  If  they  come,"  said  the  old  fel- 
low, gravely,  "  I  am  prepared  to  treat  them  as  enemies."  2 

1  "  Last  night  was  the  triumph  of  Boodle's.  Our  Masquerade  cost  two 
thousand  guineas.  A  sum  which  might  have  fertilised  a  Province  vanished 
in  a  few  hours."  So  Gibbon  wrote  on  May  the  Fourth,  1774,  while  he  was 
still  to  all  outward  appearance  a  fine  gentleman  and  nothing  more.  "  For 
my  own  part,"  he  said,  "  I  subscribe,  but  am  very  indifferent  about  it.  A 
few  friends,  and  a  great  many  books,  entertain  me;  but  I  think  fifteen  hun- 
dred people  the  worst  company  in  the  world." 

2  The  first  five  chapters  of  Bancroft's  Third  Epoch  relate,  comprehen- 
sively and  minutely,  the  uprising  of  the  American  colonies  in  consequence 
of  the  Penal  Acts  of  1774.  The  severities  exercised  against  the  friends  of 
Government,  which  form  the  unpleasing  side  of  the  story,  are  most  fairly 
and  effectively  told  by  Mr.  Lorenzo  Sabine  in  his  Biographical  Sketches  of 
the  Loyalists  of  the  Revolution.  1 


ATTITUDE    OF  THE    COLONIES 


203 


Indeed,  Putnam's  colony  was  full  of  fight.  Besides 
bringing  in  sheep  and  bullocks,  the  men  of  Connecticut 
brought  themselves  and  their  cudgels  in  even  greater 
numbers  whenever  it  was  known  that  the  Massachusetts 
Judges  were  going  to  hold  a  Court  within  a  long  day's 
walk  of  the  border-line  between  the  two  provinces.  The 
clearest  eye  in  America  already  discerned  that  the  time 
was  at  hand  when  men  would  be  wanted  as  much  as 
money  or  provisions,  and  a  great  deal  more  than  votes 
of  sympathy.  Patriotic  circles  were  discoursing  freely 
about  the  excellence  of  the  oratory  in  the  Colonial  Con- 
vention of  Virginia.  Enthusiastic  members  of  that  Con- 
vention had  assured  John  Adams,  (who  was  accustomed 
to  hear  the  same  about  himself  from  his  own  fellow- 
townsmen,)  that  Richard  Henry  Lee  and  Patrick  Henry 
would  respectively  bear  comparison  with  Cicero  and  with 
Demosthenes.  But  a  shrewd  delegate  from  South  Caro- 
lina, who  on  his  way  to  Congress  had  looked  in  at  Will- 
iamsburg to  see  what  they  were  doing  in  the  Old 
Dominion,  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  most  eloquent 
speech  had  been  made  by  Colonel  Washington.  "  I  will 
raise,"  that  officer  had  said,  "one  thousand  men  towards 
the  relief  of  Boston,  and  subsist  them  at  my  own  ex- 
pense." It  was  a  sound  Anglo-Saxon  version  of  the 
march  of  the  Marseillais.  If  they  knew  how  to  die,  he 
would  see  that  in  the  meanwhile  they  should  know  where 
they  could  get  something  to  eat. 

But  above  all,  and  before  all,  the  proposal  of  a  Con- 
gress met  with  eager  acceptance  on  the  part  of  twelve 
out  of  the  thirteen  colonies.  They  took  care  to  make 
convenient  for  themselves  both  the  day  and  the  locality 
which  Massachusetts  had  indicated.  On  the  tenth  of 
August  the  delegates  who  had  been  chosen  at  Salem 
set  forth  on  their  journey  from  Boston.  The  spaces 
which  they  had  to  traverse,  and  the  welcome  which 
everywhere  greeted  them,  brought  home  to  their  minds 
for  the  first  time  a  comfortable  assurance  that  the  task 
of  subjugating  such  a  country,  inhabited  by  such  a 
people,  would  possibly  require  more  months  and  a  great 


204  TIIE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

many  more  regiments  than  had  been  allotted  to  it  in 
the  anticipations  of  the  British  War  Office.  Everywhere 
on  their  passage  bells  were  ringing,  cannons  firing,  and 
men,  women,  and  children  crowding  "  as  if  to  a  corona- 
tion." When  John  Adams  was  an  old  gentleman,  it 
took  much  to  make  him  angry ;  but  he  never  allowed 
any  doubt  to  be  thrown,  in  his  presence,  on  the  enthu- 
siasm which  attended  himself  and  his  colleagues  during 
their  progress  to  Philadelphia  in  the  summer  of  1774. 
The  only  time  that  his  grandson  ever  incurred  the  in- 
dignation of  the  ex-President  "was  by  his  expression 
of  surprise  at  the  extent  of  those  ceremonies,  which  he 
happened  to  find  set  forth  in  high  colours  in  an  old  news- 
paper. He  was  then  a  boy,  and  knew  no  better.  But 
he  never  forgot  the  reproof." 

The  material  comforts  which  awaited  the  Bostonians 
in  ever  greater  profusion  as  they  journeyed  southwards 
were  matter  for  constantly  renewed  surprise  and  satis- 
faction, tempered  by  an  inward  sense  of  stern  superiority 
at  the  recollection  of  the  plain  but  invigorating  fare 
which  they  had  left  behind  them.  New  York,  free-hearted 
as  now,  would  not  let  them  go  forward  on  their  way 
until  they  had  devoted  six  evenings  to  rest  and  refresh- 
ment, and  as  many  days  to  seeing  the  sights;  —  the 
view  from  the  steeple  of  the"  New  Dutch  church ; 
St.  Paul's,  with  its  piazza  and  pillars,  which  had  cost 
eighteen  thousand  pounds,  in  York  money;  and  the 
statue  of  his  Majesty  on  horseback  in  the  bowling 
green,  of  solid  lead  gilded  with  gold,  which  had  still 
two  years  to  stand  on  the  marble  pedestal  before  it 
was  pulled  down  to  be  run  into  bullets.  They  rode  on 
through  New  Jersey,  which  they  thought  a  paradise ; 
as  indeed  it  was,  and  as  it  remained  until  the  Hessians 
had  been  allowed  their  will  on  it.  They  halted  for  a 
Sunday  at  Princeton  College,  where  the  scholars  studied 
very  hard,  but  sang  very  badly  in  chapel,  and  where 
the  inmates,  from  the  president  downwards,  were  as 
high  sons  of  liberty  as  any  in  America.  They  went  on 
their  course  from  town  to  city,  honouring  toasts ;  hear- 


ATTITUDE    OF  THE    COLONIES  205 

ing  sermons ;  recording  the  text  from  which  the  clergy- 
man preached,  and  observing  whether  or  not  he  spoke 
from  notes  ;  admiring  the  public  buildings,  and  care- 
fully writing  down  what  they  cost  in  currency  of  the 
colony.  At  the  "  pretty  village  "  of  Trenton  they  were 
ferried  over  the  Delaware,  in  the  opposite  direction 
from  that  in  which  it  was  to  be  crossed  on  the  December 
night  when  the  tide  of  war  showed  the  first  faint  sign 
of  turning.  On  the  nineteenth  afternoon  they  entered 
Philadelphia,  where  they  were  housed  and  feasted  with 
a  cordiality  which  in  those  early  days  of  the  Revolution 
had  the  air  of  being  universal,  and  with  a  luxury  which 
threw  even  the  glories  of  New  York  into  the  shade. 
They  had  known  what  it  was  to  breakfast  in  a  villa  on 
Hudson's  River  with  "  a  very  large  silver  coffee  pot,  a 
very  large  silver  tea  pot,  napkins  of  the  finest  materials, 
plates  full  of  choice  fruit,  and  toast  and  bread-and-butter 
in  great  perfection."  But  in  Philadelphia  —  whether 
it  was  at  the  residence  of  a  Roman  Catholic  gentleman, 
with  ten  thousand  a  year  in  sterling  money,  "  reputed 
the  first  fortune  in  America  "  ;  or  the  Chief  Justice  of 
the  Province ;  or  a  young  Quaker  lawyer  and  his  pretty 
wife  —  there  was  magnificence,  and,  above  all,  abun- 
dance under  many  roofs.  "  A  most  sinful  feast  again," 
John  Adams  wrote.  "  Everything  which  could  delight 
the  eye  or  allure  the  taste.  Curds  and  creams,  jellies, 
sweetmeats  of  various  sorts,  twenty  sorts  of  tarts,  fools, 
trifles,  floating  islands,  and  whipped  sillabubs."  These 
dainties  were  washed  down  by  floods  of  Madeira,  more 
undeniable  than  the  political  principles  of  some  among 
their  hosts.  For,  as  was  proved  just  three  years  later, 
when  red-coats  were  seated  round  the  same  tables, 
Philadelphia  loved  to  place  her  best  before  her  visitors, 
quite  irrespective  of  whether  or  not  they  were  trusty 
patriots.  But  for  the  present  the  opinions  of  the  enter- 
tainers seemed  as  sound  as  their  wine,  and  gushed  as 
freely.  At  elegant  suppers,  where  the  company  drank 
sentiments  till  near  midnight,  might  be  heard  such  un- 
exceptionable aspirations  as :    "  May    Britain   be   wise, 


206  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  America  be  free  !  "  "May  the  fair  dove  of  liberty, 
in  this  deluge  of  despotism,  find  rest  to  the  sole  of  her 
foot  on  the  soil  of  America !  "  "  May  the  collision  of 
British  flint  and  American  steel  produce  that  spark  of 
liberty  which  shall  illuminate  the  latest  posterity !  " 

Philadelphia  was  destined  in  the  course  of  the  war 
to  play  the  important,  if  not  very  noble,  part  of  serving 
as  a  Capua  to  the  British  army ;  but  the  men  of  the 
first  Congress  were  of  a  political  fibre  which  was  proof 
against  any  enervating  influences.  They  fell  to  work 
forthwith,  and  their  labours  were  continuous,  severe, 
and  admirably  adapted  to  the  particularities  of  the 
situation.  Possessed  of  no  constitutional  authority  to 
legislate  or  govern,  they  passed,  after  searching  debate 
and  minute  revision,  Resolutions  which  had  the  moral 
force  of  laws  and  the  practical  effect  of  administrative 
decrees.  On  the  eighth  of  October  they  put  on  record 
"  that  this  Congress  approve  the  opposition  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  to  the  late  Acts  of  Parliament ;  and 
if  the  same  shall  be  attempted  to  be  carried  into  exe- 
cution by  force,  all  America  ought  to  support  them  in 
their  opposition."  They  then  proceeded  to  draw  up  a 
Declaration  of  Rights,  claiming  for  the  American  people 
in  their  provincial  assemblies  a  free  and  exclusive  power 
of  legislation  on  all  matters  of  taxation  and  internal 
policy,  and  calling  for  the  repeal,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
of  eleven  Acts  of  Parliament  by  which  that  claim  was 
infringed.  They  unanimously  agreed  not  to  import  any 
merchandise  from  the  mother-country;  but,  like  wary 
men  of  business,  they  gave  themselves  another  twelve- 
month during  which  American  goods  might  be  exported 
to  Great  Britain,  if  Great  Britain  chose  to  take  them. 

One  class  of  imports  was  prohibited  specifically,  un- 
conditionally, and  apart  from  all  considerations  of  poli- 
tics. "We  will,"  so  Congress  proclaimed,  "neither 
import,  nor  purchase  any  slave  imported,  after  the  first 
day  of  December  next ;  after  which  time  we  will  wholly 
discontinue  the  slave  trade."  The  pledge  was  binding 
upon  all,  but  it  bore  the  special  stamp  of  Virginia.     The 


ATTITUDE    OF  THE   COLONIES 


207 


Assembly  of  that  colony  had  over  and  over  again  framed 
and  carried,  in  condemnation  of  the  slave  trade,  laws 
which  had  over  and  over  again  been  disallowed  by  the 
royal  veto,  enforced  on  one  occasion  by  a  personal  and 
emphatic  expression  of  the  royal  anger.  It  is  melan- 
choly to  reflect  what  the  social  condition  and  the  politi- 
cal history  of  Virginia  might  have  been  if  the  home  Gov- 
ernment had  allowed  free  play  to  the  generous  impulses 
which  actuated  her  public  men  before  the  Revolutionary 
war.  They  liked  to  be  told  high  and  hard  truths,  and 
were  prepared  to  act  them  out  in  practice.  "  Every 
gentleman  here  is  born  a  petty  tyrant.  Taught  to  re- 
gard a  part  of  our  own  species  in  the  most  abject  and  con- 
temptible degree  below  us,  we  lose  that  idea  of  the  dig- 
nity of  man  which  the  hand  of  Nature  hath  planted  in 
us  for  great  and  useful  purposes.  Habituated  from  our 
infancy  to  trample  upon  the  rights  of  human  nature, 
every  liberal  sentiment  is  enfeebled  in  our  minds ;  and 
in  such  an  infernal  school  are  to  be  educated  our  future 
legislators  and  rulers."  That  was  how  in  1773  a  Virgin- 
ian representative  discoursed  openly  to  his  fellows.  No 
such  speech  could  have  been  made  with  impunity  in  the 
State  Legislature  during  the  generation  which  preceded 
the  Secession  of  1861. 

And  finally,  knowing  by  repeated  experience  that  for 
Americans  to  petition  Parliament  was  only  to  court  their 
own  humiliation,  Congress  laid  formality  aside,  and  pub- 
lished a  direct  appeal  to  all  true  and  kindly  Englishmen. 
The  people  of  Great  Britain,  (so  the  document  ran,)  had 
been  led  to  greatness  by  the  hand  of  liberty ;  and  there- 
fore the  people  of  America,  in  all  confidence,  invoked 
their  sense  of  justice,  prayed  for  permission  to  share  their 
freedom,  and  anxiously  protested  against  the  calumny 
that  the  colonies  were  aiming  at  separation  under  the 
pretence  of  asserting  the  right  of  self-government. 
Chatham,  after  confiding  to  the  House  of  Lords  that  his 
favourite  study  had  been  the  political  literature  of  "  the 
master-countries  of  the  world,"  declared  and  avowed 
that  the  resolutions  and  addresses  put  forth  by  the  Con- 


208  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

gress  at  Philadelphia,  "  for  solidity  of  reasoning,  force  of 
sagacity,  and  wisdom  of  conclusion,  under  such  a  com- 
plication of  difficult  circumstances,"  were  surpassed  by 
no  body  of  men,  of  any  age  and  nation,  who  had  ever  is- 
sued a  state  paper.  A  contemporary  Scotch  journalist 
described  these  productions  as  written  with  so  much 
spirit,  sound  reason,  and  true  knowledge  of  the  constitu- 
tion, that  they  had  given  more  uneasiness  than  all  the 
other  proceedings  of  the  Congress.1 

The  rate  of  speed  at  which  compositions  of  that  excel- 
lence were  devised,  drafted,  criticised,  amended,  and 
sanctioned  appears  enviable  to  the  member  of  a  modern 
representative  assembly ;  but  it  fell  short  of  what  satis- 
fied men  accustomed  to  the  succinct  methods  of  a  New 
England  town-meeting,  and  for  whom  Philadelphia  was 
a  place  of  honourable  but,  as  it  seemed  to  them,  almost 
interminable  exile.  As  early  as  the  tenth  of  October 
John  Adams  wrote  :  "  The  deliberations  of  the  Congress 
are  spun  out  to  an  immeasurable  length.  There  is  so 
much  wit,  sense,  learning,  acuteness,  subtlety,  and  elo- 
quence among  fifty  gentlemen,  each  of  whom  has  been 
habituated  to  lead  and  guide  in  his  own  Province,  that 
an  immensity  of  time  is  spent  unnecessarily."  The  end 
was  not  far  off.  On  the  twentieth  of  the  month  the  Penn- 
sylvanian  Assembly  entertained  Congress  at  a  dinner 
in  the  City  Tavern.  The  whole  table  rose  to  the  senti- 
ment, "  May  the  sword  of  the  parent  never  be  stained 
with  the  blood  of  her  children ! "  Even  the  Quakers 
who  were  present  drained  their  glasses  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  not  a  toast,  but  a  prayer ;  and  a  prayer  which 
was  much  to  their  own  liking.  Six  days  afterwards  Con- 
gress dissolved  itself.  The  tenth  of  May  was  appointed 
for  the  meeting  of  its  successor ;  and  the  Canadian  colo- 
nies and  the  Floridas  were  invited  to  send  representa- 
tives. Two  days  more,  and  the  Massachusetts  delegates 
mounted  for  their  homeward  journey.  "  We  took  our  de- 
parture," said  Adams,  "in  a  very  great  rain,  from  the 

1  The  passage  referred  to  in  the  text  is  quoted  by  Professor  Tyler  in 
chapter  xv.  of  his  Literary  History. 


ATTITUDE    OF   THE    COLONIES  209 

happy,  the  peaceful,  the  elegant,  the  hospitable  and  po- 
lite city  of  Philadelphia.  It  is  not  very  likely  that  I  shall 
ever  visit  this  part  of  the  world  again,  but  I  shall  ever  re- 
tain a  most  grateful  sense  of  the  many  civilities  I  have 
received  in  it,  and  shall  think  myself  happy  to  have  an 
opportunity  of  returning  them."  Events  were  at  hand 
of  such  a  nature  that  to  set  a  limit  to  what  was  likely 
needed  more  than  human  foresight.  John  Adams  had 
not  seen  Philadelphia  for  the  last  time,  by  many ;  and 
the  return  dinners  with  which  he  requited  her  hospital- 
ity were  given  by  him  as  President  of  seventeen  States 
and  six  millions  of  people. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE  GENERAL  ELECTION  OF    1774-      THE  WINTER  SESSION 

While  the  House  of  Commons  was  scheming  the  ruin 
of  Boston,  its  own  days  were  already  being  numbered  ; 
and  those  who  speculated  on  the  exact  date  of  its  dis- 
appearance had  a  very  narrow  margin  within  which 
their  calculations  could  range.  Charles  Fox  experienced 
the  fortune  which  frequently  awaited  him  where  money 
was  to  be  lost  or  won.  He  laid  Sir  George  Macartney 
ten  guineas  to  five  that  the  Dissolution  would  not  take 
place  before  Christmas,  1774;  and  on  the  last  day  of 
September  sixty  messengers  passed  through  one  single 
turnpike  in  a  hurry  to  inform  the  country  that  the  writs 
were  being  prepared  for  immediate  issue. 

When  dealing  with  so  long  and  so  eventful  a  national 
history  as  ours,  it  is  never  safe  to  speak  in  superlatives; 
but  it  may  confidently  be  asserted  that  the  burden  of 
proof  rests  with  those  who  maintain  that  a  worse  Par- 
liament ever  sate  than  that  which  was  elected  in  the 
spring  of  1768.  Chosen  amidst  an  orgy  of  corruption, 
its  title  to  remembrance  rests  on  two  performances. 
By  a  great  and  sustained  exertion  of  misdirected  energy 
it  succeeded  in  depriving  the  Middlesex  electors  of  their 
rights  for  half  a  dozen  sessions ;  and  it  threw  away  the 
loyalty  of  America.  One  good  deed  stands  to  its  ac- 
count. In  a  better  moment,  inspired  by  the  inflexible 
integrity  of  George  Grenville,  it  had  enacted  a  law 
framed  in  the  interest  of  electoral  morality  with  sincere 
intention,  and  not  a  little  skill.  The  trial  of  an  election 
petition,  which  had  hitherto  been  determined  by  a  party 
vote  in  a  Committee  of  the  whole  House,  was  now  trans- 

210 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  211 

ferred  to  a  small  number  of  selected  members,  who 
were  bound  to  listen  to  the  whole  evidence,  and  decide 
the  case  according  to  its  rights.  The  proceeding  be- 
came henceforward  something  of  a  judicial  reality, 
instead  of  a  mere  opportunity  for  the  people  in  power 
to  increase  their  existing  majority  by  substituting  a 
friend  in  the  place  of  an  opponent.  Great  things  were 
expected  from  the  new  Act  by  honest  men  of  all  politi- 
cal opinions.  Samuel  Johnson  congratulated  the  elec- 
tors of  Great  Britain  on  the  circumstance  that  a  claim 
to  a  seat  in  Parliament  would  now  be  examined  with  the 
same  scrupulousness  and  solemnity  as  any  other  title. 
Under  the  old  state  of  things,  (so  he  most  truly  said,) 
to  have  friends  in  a  borough  was  of  little  use  to  a  candi- 
date unless  he  had  friends  in  the  House  of  Commons; 
and  a  man  became  a  member  because  he  was  chosen, 
not  by  his  constituents,  but  by  his  fellow-senators. 
The  case  could  not  be  more  pithily  stated  ;  but  it  reads 
oddly  in  a  pamphlet1  issued  on  behalf  of  a  Cabinet 
which,  by  the  brute  force  of  partisan  votes  within  the 
walls  of  Parliament,  thrice  unseated  Wilkes,  and  ended 
by  seating  Luttrell. 

These  symptoms  of  nascent  purity  were  not  equally 
acceptable  in  a  higher  quarter.  The  King  understood 
the  inner  working  of  his  own  system  of  government 
better  than  did  the  downright  old  Tory  author  who  had 
taken  up  the  cudgels  to  defend  it.  Little  as  George  the 
Third  loved  Grenville  when  alive,  he  had  still  less  liking 
for  the  well-meant  and  carefully  devised  statute  which 
that  statesman  had  left  behind  him  as  a  legacy  to  his 
country.  The  Commons  voted  by  more  than  two  to 
one  in  favour  of  making  the  Act  perpetual.  No  one 
argued  against  the  proposal  on  its  merits  except  Rigby, 
who,  with  a  touch  of  genuine  feeling,  implored  the 
House  to  think  twice  before  it  forbade  treating.  But 
the  King  next  morning  expressed  to  Lord  North  his 
regret  that  Parliament  had  been  misled  by  a  false  love 

1The  Patriot,  Addressed  to  the  Electors  of  Great  Britain,  1774. 


212  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  popularity,  and  consoled  himself  with  the  reflection 
that  passion  was  a  short  madness. 

Grenville's  law  had  very  seriously  altered,  for  a  time 
at  all  events,  the  conditions  under  which  his  Majesty 
practised  the  art  wherein  he  was  a  master.  The  first 
dissolution  which  takes  place  under  a  new  Corrupt 
Practices  Act  is  always  a  season  of  perturbation  among 
those  more  humble  operators  who  now  pull  the  hidden 
strings  of  politics;  and  the  King  and  his  coadjutors,  in 
the  autumn  of  1774,  hesitated  about  doing  many  things 
which  they  had  done  fearlessly  at  the  general  election 
of  1768  and  which,  after  the  manner  of  their  craft,  they 
had  learned  how  to  do  safely  before  the  general  election 
of  1780.1  But,  even  in  those  early  days,  whenever  they 
were  on  firm  ground,  they  acted  broadly,  promptly,  and 
decisively.  Parliament  had  made  it  dangerous  to  bribe 
the  electors  in  the  boroughs;  but  nothing,  except  the 
limits  of  that  Secret  Service  Fund  which  had  been 
extracted  from  the  taxpayer  on  the  pretext  that  it  was 
to  be  expended  in  securing  the  general  interests  of  the 
nation  abroad  and  at  home,  stood  in  their  way  when  it 
was  a  question  of  bribing  the  patrons.  "  A  note,"  (such 
were  Lord  North's  orders  to  Mr.  John  Robinson,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,)  "  should  be  written  to  Lord 
Falmouth  in  my  name,  and  put  into  safe  hands.  His 
Lordship  must  be  told  in  as  polite  terms  as  possible  that 
I  hope  he  will  permit  me  to  recommend  to  three  of  his 
six  seats  in  Cornwall.  The  terms  he  expects  are  2500/. 
a  seat,  to  which  I  am  ready  to  agree;  "  and  he  had  still 
to  agree  when  his  noble  friend,  rather  shabbily  (as  he 
complained)  made  it  guineas  instead  of  pounds.  "  Mr. 
Legge,"  wrote  the  Prime  Minister  on  the  sixth  of  Octo- 

1  The  King  and  Rigby  were  not  alone  in  their  dislike  of  the  Grenville 
Act,  as  is  indicated  in  Samuel  Foote's  play  of  The  Cozeners.  The  piece 
was  published  in  1 778;   but  it  had  been  put  upon  the  stage  in  1 774. 

"  Mrs.  Fleec'em.     Have  you  advertised  a  seat  to  be  sold  ? 

"Flaw.  I  never  neglect  business,  you  know;  but  the  perpetuating  of 
this  damned  Bribery  Act  has  thrown  such  a  rub  in  our  way. 

"  Mrs.  Fleec'em.  New  acts,  like  new  brooms,  make  a  little  bustle  at 
first.     But  the  dirt  will  return,  never  fear." 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  21 3 

ber,  "  can  only  afford  400/.  If  he  comes  in  for  Lost- 
withiel  he  will  cost  the  public  2000  guineas.  Gascoign 
should  have  the  refusal  of  Tregony  if  he  will  pay  1000/., 
but  I  do  not  see  why  we  should  bring  him  in  cheaper 
than  any  other  servant  of  the  Crown.  If  he  will  not 
pay,  he  must  give  way  to  Mr.  Best  or  Mr.  Peachy." 
Six  weeks  afterwards,  when  the  goods  had  all  been 
delivered  and  the  bills  were  coming  in,  some  of  the  bar- 
gains had  not  yet  been  finally  closed.  "  Let  Cooper 
know  whether  you  promised  Masterman  2500/.  or  3000/. 
for  each  of  Lord  Edgcumbe's  seats.  I  was  going  to 
pay  him  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  pounds,  but  he 
demanded  fifteen  thousand."  1 

These  delectable  details  had  for  George  the  Third 
the  same  fascination  as  the  numbers  and  discipline  of 
his  soldiers  had  for  Frederic  the  Great,  and  their  height 
for  Frederic's  father.  Determined  to  get  his  informa- 
tion from  the  fountain-head,  if  that  phrase  can  be  applied 
to  such  very  muddy  water,  he  wrote  direct  for  news, 
and  more  news,  to  Mr.  John  Robinson,  whose  assiduity 
in  keeping  him  informed  of  what  was  going  forward, 
(so  he  graciously  acknowledged,)  he  could  not  enough 
commend.  He  sent  three  letters  to  Lord  North,  in  the 
course  of  five  days,  about  the  poll  for  Aldermen  in  the 
City  of  London,  regarding  it  as  an  indication  of  the  proba- 
ble action  which  the  Liverymen  would  take  at  the  poll 
for  their  parliamentary  members.  He  was  careful  to 
remind  the  Prime  Minister  of  a  report  which  had 
reached  his  ears,  that  bad  votes  were  being  tendered 
for  the  opposition  candidates  at  Westminster ;  and  he 
gave  personal  orders  that  his  household  troops,  horse 
and  foot,  should  be  canvassed  on  behalf  of  Lord  Percy 
and  Lord  Thomas  Clinton,  who  were  standing  in  the 
Government  interest.  In  one  electoral  department, 
more  important  then  than  now,  he  had  a  free  hand, 
and  he  let  its  weight  be  felt.  The  mode  of  choosing 
Scottish  representative  peers  was  not  affected  by  the 

1  Abergavenny  MSS. :  published  by  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Com- 
mission, 1887. 


214  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Grenville  Act ;  and  the  King  arranged  the  list  as  sum- 
marily as  though  he  were  nominating  as  many  Lords 
in  Waiting.  His  method  of  management  called  forth 
on  the  present  occasion  a  letter  in  refreshing  contrast 
to  the  waste  of  sycophancy  and  greediness  by  which  it 
is  surrounded.  Lord  Buchan  informed  Dartmouth,  as 
the  only  Minister  with  whom  he  cared  to  communicate 
on  a  friendly  footing,  that  Lord  Suffolk,  writing  as  Sec- 
retary of  State,  had  thought  proper  to  send  him  an 
authoritative  message  on  the  subject  of  the  sixteen 
peers  to  be  elected  for  Scotland.  "  I  returned  his 
Lordship  an  answer  suitable  to  the  affront  he  had  vent- 
ured to  offer;  and  I  do  most  earnestly  intreat  your 
Lordship,  as  an  old  acquaintance,  and  a  person  for 
whom  I  have  a  singular  good-will,  that  you  will  when 
an  opportunity  offers  suggest  that,  if  I  am  to  be 
applied  to  for  the  future  in  that  manner  by  any  of  the 
King's  servants  I  shall,  notwithstanding  my  disposition 
to  rustication,  make  one  more  visit  to  the  great  city  to 
chastise  the  person  who  shall  waste  his  ink  and  paper 
in  that  manner."  1 

The  consequences  of  the  Grenville  Act  were  not  as 
sudden  nor  as  sweeping  as  Rigby  apprehended.  It 
may  have  seemed  a  dry  election  to  those  who,  between 
their  twinges  of  gout,  recollected  the  flood  of  liquor 
which  six  years  before  had  inundated  the  constituencies. 
But  there  was  as  yet  no  lack  of  the  rough  conviviality 
which  long  ere  this  had  driven  Horace  Walpole  from 
Parliament.  It  was  a  bad  time  for  a  member  of  the 
Dilettanti  Club  who  at  that  period  of  the  year  did  not 
care  to  leave  London,  and  the  great  country  houses 
round  London,  for  any  point  short  of  Italy ;  especially 
if  his  political  interests  required  him  to  travel  almost 
as  far  as  Italy  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction.  John 
Crawford  the  younger  of  Auchinanes,  —  whose  grati- 
tude (as  has  already  been  related)  Charles  Fox  ac- 
quired by  coming  chivalrously  to  the  rescue  when  he 

1  Dartmouth  MSS.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  211. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  215 

was  involved  in  rhetorical  difficulties,1  —  has  left  a 
record  of  what  he  went  through  in  order  to  re-enter 
a  House  of  Commons  where  he  was  afraid  to  speak, 
and  did  not  greatly  care  to  sit.  No  one  can  read  with- 
out compassion,  and  few  politicians  without  a  pang  of 
sympathy,  the  letters  which  he  addressed  to  those 
members  of  the  Fitzpatrick  connection  the  necessities 
of  whose  canvass  took  them  no  further  afield  than  the 
Home  Counties.  It  had  been  serious  enough  when, 
between  one  election  and  another,  he  had  been  doing  no 
more  than  nurse  his  popularity,  and  attempt  painfully 
to  acquire  in  North  British  circles  the  reputation  of  a 
good  fellow.  "  I  have  at  this  moment,"  he  wrote  to 
Lord  Ossory,  "  three  neighbours  who  are  come  to  dine 
with  me.  I  dine  at  four,  and  they  came  at  one,  and  I 
am  now  making  them  my  mortal  enemies  by  not  going 
down  to  them.  I  had  yesterday  likewise  three  gentle- 
men to  dine,  whom  I  wished  most  to  be  well  with ;  but 
I  have  heard  that  they  were  dissatisfied  with  me  for  not 
giving  them  wine  enough.  My  wine  is  the  best,  I  sup- 
pose, in  the  world  :  my  clarets  of  vintage  fifty-nine  ;  my 
Port,  Sherry,  Madeira,  sweet  wines,  some  of  it  forty 
years  old,  and  scarce  any  less  than  twenty."  It  is  no 
wonder  that,  when  the  Renfrewshire  election  came  in 
earnest,  the  owner  of  this  cellar  was  paying  his  penalty 
in  bodily  suffering  for  the  glory  of  such  a  possession. 
"  This  is  a  small  county,  and  whenever  I  get  upon  my 
feet,  I  shall  be  able  to  go  through  it  in  a  few  days. 
The  Duke  of  Hamilton  has  given  me  his  interest,  which 
is  very  considerable.  You  may  guess  how  I  pass  my 
time  between  the  gout  and  the  country  gentlemen  who 
come  flocking  in  upon  me.  I  have  passed  two  cruel 
nights  ;  violent  pain,  abominable  company,  and  no  sleep. 
Yesterday  my  antagonist  came  to  see  me.  There  were 
eight  besides  myself,  who  only  appeared  for  half  an 
hour.  They  sat  from  three  to  ten  o'clock,  and  I  had 
the   curiosity   to   inquire   from    the   butler   what   they 

1  Early  History  of  Charles  Fox,  chapter  x. 


2 1 6  THE  AMERICAN  RE  VOL  UTION 

drank.  You  can  calculate  better  than  I  can,  so  divide 
ten  bottles  of  wine,  and  sixteen  bowls  of  punch,  each  of 
which  would  hold  four  bottles.  Can  you  conceive  any- 
thing more  beastly  or  more  insupportable  ?  "  1 

Meanwhile  the  leading  member  of  Crawford's  circle 
would  have  been  well  pleased  to  light  upon  a  seat  where 
the  process  of  electioneering  consisted  in  making  him- 
self agreeable  to  a  duke,  and  drinking  a  sufficiency  of 
fifty-nine  claret  with  commoners.  The  purchase  of 
boroughs  was  a  cash  transaction  and  therefore  outside 
the  sphere  of  Charles  Fox's  financial  operations ;  and 
the  few  which  could  be  obtained  as  a  favour  were  not 
for  him.  The  most  confiding  of  patrons  would  hesitate 
before  he  sacrificed  a  couple  of  thousand  pounds  for 
the  honour  of  making  a  senator  of  a  young  gentleman 
whose  shortcomings  were  historical,  and  whose  public 
virtues  might  well  be  regarded  as  of  too  recent  origin  to 
stand  the  strain  of  a  six  years  Parliament.  Fox,  said 
Walpole,  like  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet,  shifted  to  many 
quarters ;  but  in  most  the  cock  crew,  and  he  walked 
off.  At  last  he  found  an  asylum  at  Malmesbury,  a 
delightful  constituency  with  thirteen  electors.  It  is 
possible  that  his  success  was  the  result  of  a  compromise 
between  the  two  parties ;  for  his  colleague  was  Mr. 
William  Strahan,  as  estimable  a  man  as  supported  the 
Government,  which  as  King's  Printer  he  could  not  very 
well  help  doing.  To  satisfy  the  current  requirements 
of  the  Malmesbury  burgesses  he  possessed  that  which 

1  Letters  in  the  Russell  collection,  from  Crawford  to  Lord  Ossory;  Sep- 
tember, 1774.  The  locus  classicus  which  determines  what  our  ancestors 
regarded  as  an  inadequate  provision  of  liquor  for  a  party  of  three  may  be 
found  in  a  letter  written  to  George  Selwyn  by  a  fast  parson.  "  The  whim 
took  them  of  ordering  their  dinner,  and  a  very  good  one  they  had :  mack- 
erel, a  delicate  neck  of  veal,  a  piece  of  Hamborough  beef,  cabbage  and 
salad,  and  a  gooseberry  tart.  When  they  had  drunk  the  bottle  of  white 
wine,  and  of  port,  which  accompanied  the  dinner,  and  after  that  the  only 
double  bottle  of  claret  that  I  had  left,  I  found  in  an  old  corner  one  of  the 
two  bottles  of  Burgundy  which  I  took  from  your  cellar  when  you  gave  me 
the  key  of  it.  By  Jove,  how  they  did  abuse  my  modesty  that  instead  of  two 
I  did  not  take  two  dozen !  But,  having  no  more,  we  closed  with  a  pint 
of  Dantzic  cherry  brandy,  and  have  just  parted  in  a  tolerable  state  of  in- 
sensibility to  the  ills  of  human  life." 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  2\J 

Charles  Fox  wanted ;  for  he  had  long  been  in  a  position 
to  lay  by  a  thousand  pounds  a  year  from  the  profits  of 
his  business. 

The  arrangement  suited  Strahan ;  for  he  was  not  one 
of  those  who  carried  public  differences  into  personal 
relations.  His  two  closest  intimacies  were  with  two 
men  who  had  not  a  political  view  in  common.  He  had 
done  more  than  anybody  else  to  help  Samuel  Johnson 
through  his  period  of  distress ;  and  in  later  and  happier 
days  he  acted  as  his  banker,  and  such  a  banker  as  any 
literary  man  would  rejoice  to  have.  He  found  places 
for  young  people  whom  the  great  writer  desired  to 
assist,  and  franked  his  letters ;  and  did  his  best  to 
enable  him  to  frank  them  himself  by  recommending 
him  to  the  Secretary  for  the  Treasury  as  a  parliamen- 
tary candidate,  on  the  ground  that  the  King's  friends 
would  find  him  a  lamb,  and  the  King's  enemies  a  lion. 
On  the  other  hand  Strahan  came  as  near  as  the  ordi- 
nary duration  of  human  existence  would  allow  to  being 
a  life-long  friend  of  Franklin,  whom  in  1757  he  already 
regarded  as  the  most  agreeable  of  men,  and  the  most 
desirable  of  associates  in  the  calling  to  which  they  had 
both  been  bred.  In  1784,  when  even  Franklin  was  too 
old  for  the  offer  of  a  partnership  in  a  printing  office, 
Strahan  was  still  urging  him  to  come  as  a  guest  to 
England,  and  to  stay  there  for  good  and  all.  What 
Franklin  thought  of  Strahan  may  be  gathered  from  the 
fact  that  he  forgave  him  his  votes  in  favour  of  North's 
policy :  a  forgiveness  which  he  conveyed  in  a  letter  of 
grim,  and  for  him  rather  heavy-handed,  raillery.1  Charles 
Fox  had  every  reason  to  be  satisfied,  for  he  had  secured 

1  "Philadelphia:  5th  July,  1775. 

"Mr.  Strahan,  —  You  are  a  member  of  Parliament,  and  one  of  that 
majority  which  has  doomed  my  country  to  destruction.  You  have  begun 
to-burn  our  towns  and  murder  our  people.  Look  upon  your  hands.  They 
are  stained  with  the  blood  of  your  relations !  You  and  I  were  long  friends. 
You  are  now  my  enemy,  and  I  am  "  Yours, 

"B.  Franklin." 

There  was  some  excuse  for  a  French  editor  who  took  the  letter  in  sad 
earnest. 


2l8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

what  in  those  facile  days  passed  for  an  ideal  parliamen- 
tary situation ;  —  the  membership  for  a  borough  repre- 
sented by  two  gentlemen  of  opposite  opinions,  of  whom 
both  were  easy  to  live  with,  and  one  had  plenty  of  money. 
The  electoral  calm  in  which  he  now  basked  was  in  strik- 
ing contrast  with  all  that  awaited  him  from  the  moment 
when  he  set  his  foot  on  the  Westminster  hustings. 

The  dissolution  found  Burke,  as  well  as  Fox,  at  sea 
with  regard  to  his  electioneering  prospects.  The  patron 
of  his  borough  was  tired  of  bringing  into  Parliament  pri- 
vate friends,  from  whom  he  was  loth  to  take  a  shilling, 
and  who,  not  being  local  landowners,  could  do  noth- 
ing towards  helping  forward  his  own  election  for  the 
county.  Burke,  with  his  reverence  for  the  British  consti- 
tution as  it  existed,  recognised  the  situation  frankly,  and 
almost  sympathetically.  "  I  am  extremely  anxious,"  he 
wrote  to  Lord  Rockingham,  "about  the  fate  of  Lord 
Verney  and  that  borough.  It  is  past  all  description, 
past  all  conception,  the  supineness,  neglect,  and  blind 
security  of  my  friend.  He  will  be  cheated,  if  he  is 
not  robbed."  But  none  the  less  the  blow  was  a  heavy 
one.  "  Sometimes  when  I  am  alone,"  (Burke's  letter 
proceeded,)  "in  spite  of  all  my  efforts  I  fall  into  a 
melancholy  which  is  inexpressible.  Whether  I  ought 
not  totally  to  abandon  this  public  station,  for  which  I 
am  so  unfit,  and  have  of  course  been  so  unfortunate, 
I  know  not.  Most  assuredly  I  never  will  put  my  feet 
within  the  door  of  St.  Stephen's  chapel  without  being 
as  much  my  own  master  as  hitherto  I  have  been." 
Lord  Rockingham  hastened  to  relieve  his  friend's  solici- 
tude, and  placed  at  his  disposal  one  of  his  own  seats 
at  Malton.  While  travelling  thither  Burke  learned  that 
there  were  other  public  thieves  busy  at  election  time 
besides  those  who  frequented  the  waiting-room  at  the 
Treasury,  for  he  was  stopped  by  two  highwaymen  on 
Finchley  Common.  In  the  same  week  the  Prime  Min- 
ister met  the  same  fate.  The  perils  of  the  road,  at  a 
season  when  the  lot  of  a  politician  was  already  hard 
enough  without  them,  may  be  estimated  by  the  circum- 


GENERAL  ELECTION   OF  1774  219 

stance  that  Lord  North  set  out  on  his  journey  expecting 
to  be  robbed,  while  Burke's  feeling  was  surprise  at  his 
good  fortune  in  never  having  been  robbed  before. 

A  compliment  was  in  store  for  Burke  more  valuable 
even  than  the  confidence  and  affection  of  a  Rockingham. 
Many  of  the  citizens  of  Bristol  had  had  enough  of 
scandals  and  disorders  at  home  and  in  the  colonies,  and 
were  desirous  of  lighting  upon  a  representative  who  had 
studied  business  in  its  larger  aspect,  and  who  under- 
stood the  close  connection  between  sound  trade  and 
good  government.  They  found  their  man  in  Burke  ; 
and  he  had  just  been  chaired  at  Malton  when  he  re- 
ceived an  invitation  to  contest  Bristol.  He  placed  down 
no  money.  He  would  give  no  pledges.  Even  about 
America  he  promised  nothing  but  impartial  considera- 
tion of  matters  deeply  concerning  the  interests  of  a 
commercial  community  which  still  claimed  to  be  the 
second  port  in  the  kingdom.  To  borrow  a  phrase  from 
the  vocabulary  of  transatlantic  politics,  he  ran  upon  his 
record ;  and  a  grand  record  it  was,  as  he  laid  it  before 
the  people  of  Bristol  in  the  speech  which  he  delivered 
at  the  moment  of  his  arrival  amongst  them.  "  When  I 
first  devoted  myself  to  the  public  service,  I  considered 
how  I  should  render  myself  fit  for  it ;  and  this  I  did 
by  endeavouring  to  discover  what  it  was  that  gave  this 
country  the  rank  it  holds  in  the  world.  I  found  that 
our  prosperity  and  dignity  arose  from  our  constitution 
and  our  commerce.  Both  these  I  have  spared  no  study 
to  understand,  and  no  endeavour  to  support.  I  now 
appear  before  you  to  make  trial  whether  my  earnest 
endeavours  have  been  so  wholly  oppressed  by  the 
weakness  of  my  abilities  as  to  be  rendered  insignificant 
in  the  eyes  of  a  great  trading  city.  This  is  my  trial 
to-day.  My  industry  is  not  on  trial.  Of  my  industry 
I  am  sure."  He  had  not  slept,  he  said,  from  the  time 
that  he  received  their  summons  to  the  time  that  he 
was  addressing  them  in  their  Guildhall ;  and,  if  he  was 
chosen  their  member,  he  would  be  as  far  from  slumber- 
ing and  sleeping,  when  their  service  required  him  to  be 


220  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

awake,  as  he  had  been  when  coming  to  offer  himself  as 
a  candidate  for  their  favour. 

It  was  a  noble  compact,  and  on  his  side  it  was  nobly 
kept.  He  came  victorious  out  of  a  struggle  so  pro- 
tracted, and  to  his  leading  supporters  so  terribly  ex- 
pensive, that  it  might  well  have  aroused,  in  a  mind 
acute  as  his,  some  faint  suspicion  that  the  British  con- 
stitution required  not  only  defending  but  amending. 
His  colleague,  by  one  of  those  freaks  of  luck  which  so 
often  allot  to  men,  otherwise  obscure,  a  conspicuous  but 
uncomfortable  niche  in  history,  will  pass  to  the  end  of 
time  as  the  prototype  of  a  political  nonentity.  But,  in 
truth,  he  had  both  spirit  and  ability,  and  could  explain 
himself  with  effect  not  only  to  a  throng  of  triumphant 
partisans,  but,  as  was  afterwards  shown  on  many  occa- 
sions, to  a  hostile  House  of  Commons.  At  the  declara- 
tion of  the  poll,  so  far  from  saying  ditto  to  Mr.  Burke, 
Mr.  Cruger  spoke  first ;  and  a  good  third  of  Mr.  Burke's 
speech  consisted  in  a  statement  of  the  points  on  which 
he  differed  from  Mr.  Cruger. 

In  many  other  constituencies  besides  Bristol  there 
was  plenty  of  independence,  and  little  flagrant  corrup- 
tion. It  was  to  an  unusual  degree  a  country  gentle- 
man's election.  The  King,  so  far  back  as  August,  had 
prophesied  that  a  dissolution  would  fill  the  House  with 
men  of  landed  property,  as  the  Nabobs,  Planters,  and 
other  volunteers  were  not  ready  for  the  battle.  There 
was  less  money  forthcoming  than  on  the  last  occasion ; 
and,  which  was  more  to  the  purpose,  people  needed  to 
be  very  cautious  how  they  spent  what  they  were  pre- 
pared to  part  with.  Mr.  Grenville's  Act  (as  Horace 
Walpole  said)  now  hung  out  all  its  terrors.  The  rich 
Londoners  had  been  taken  by  surprise,  and  did  not 
venture  at  that  eleventh  hour  to  throw  about  their  guin- 
eas and  banknotes.  The  squires  who  lived  close  at 
hand,  and  who  loved  to  entertain  even  where  there  was 
nothing  to  be  got  by  it,  had  established  a  claim  on  the 
suffrages  of  rural  boroughs  by  a  course  of  hospitality 
which  no  laws,  except  those  of  health,  could  punish. 


GENERAL   ELECTION  OF  1774  221 

It  was  not  a  crime  for  a  host,  who  himself  took  his 
share,  to  give  his  friend  a  couple  of  bottles  of  wine  and 
half  a  bowl  of  punch,  and  provide  him  with  a  bed  in 
which  to  sleep  them  off.  And  again  the  large  propri- 
etors, who  could  afford  to  set  aside  a  square  mile  of 
grass  from  the  plough  and  the  dairy  farm,  had  at  their 
disposal  abundant  material  for  sustaining  their  influence 
and  popularity.  A  great  family,  which  represented  a 
great  town,  made  little  of  keeping  up  a  herd  of  five  or 
six  hundred  deer  for  the  express  object  of  supplying 
the  Corporation  banquets,  and  the  private  tables  of  im- 
portant citizens.  The  breaking-up  of  a  deer-park  was 
in  those  days  regarded  as  an  infallible  symptom  that 
the  owner  of  it  had  done  with  electioneering.  "  Harry 
Mills  was  with  me  yesterday,"  (so  runs  a  letter  which  is 
worth  quoting,)  "and  says  it  now  begins  to  be  suspected 
by  Sir  John's  friends  that  he  does  not  mean  to  offer 
himself  again  for  Newcastle.  It  is  affirmed  that  he  is 
going  to  dispark  Roadley,  and  lay  it  out  in  farms.  All 
your  Newcastle  friends  have  been  served  with  venison. 
And  indeed  I  do  not  think  there  can  be  a  more  success- 
ful battery  played  off  against  a  Corporation  than  one 
plentifully  supplied  with  venison  and  claret."  This  let- 
ter was  addressed  in  1777  to  Stoney  Bowes,  who  had 
just  been  beaten  in  a  bye-election  for  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne  by  the  head  of  a  family  which  had  represented 
that  city,  with  a  few  short  intervals,  for  more  than  a 
century.1 

Apart  altogether  from  what  he  gave  them,  the  free- 
men and  freeholders  preferred  a  neighbour  for  his  own 
sake ;  and,  whoever  else  had  a  chance  against  him,  a 
courtier  had  none.  Where  bribery,  (said  Horace  Wal- 
pole,)  was  out  of  the  question,  they  would  give  their 
votes  to  a  man  of  birth  who  resided  in  their  own  district, 

1  Report  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Newcastle-on-Tyne  for  1857. 
Bowes  was  the  original  of  Barry  Lyndon,  and  a  still  greater  scoundrel,  with 
an  even  more  extraordinary  story.  Thackeray,  by  a  stroke  of  genius,  turned 
him  from  a  mean  hound  into  a  swaggering  ruffian  ;  and  such  as  Thackeray 
made  him,  he  will  remain. 


222  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

or  to  a  clever  talking  candidate  from  a  distance  who 
could  show  them  a  specimen  of  the  style  in  which  he 
would  denounce  sinecures  if  they  sent  him  to  Parlia- 
ment. But  from  neither  of  those  two  classes  did  Wal- 
pole  hope  for  any  advantage  to  the  nation.  The  country 
gentlemen  were  bitterly  angry  with  the  colonists ;  and, 
as  for  the  bustling  politicians,  the  King  would  still  be 
able  to  buy  the  representatives  themselves,  though  the 
representatives  did  not  venture  to  buy  the  electors. 
And  so  his  Majesty  appeared  to  think;  for,  as  soon  as 
the  first  contests  had  been  decided,  he  directed  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury  to  let  him  see  the  names  of  those 
who  had  been  successful,  tabulated  under  the  heads  of 
"Pro,"  "Con,"  and  "Doubtful." 

Walpole's  belief  that  the  new  House  of  Commons 
would  be  no  less  compliant  than  the  last  was  shared  by 
even  abler  men  who  watched  our  politics  from  without. 
That  was  the  sense  in  which  the  Prussian  Minister  wrote 
to  Potsdam  ;  and  the  old  King  replied  that  he  never 
expected  otherwise,  as  he  had  long  known  that  money 
was  the  mainspring  of  the  British  Constitution.1  Frank- 
lin, from  what  he  saw  of  the  elections,  went  so  far  as  to 
doubt  whether  there  was  any  use  in  having  a  House  of 
Commons.  "Since  a  Parliament,"  he  wrote,  "is  al- 
ways to  do  as  a  ministry  would  have  it,  why  should  we 
not  be  governed  by  the  ministry  in  the  first  instance  ? 
They  could  afford  to  govern  us  much  cheaper,  the  Par- 
liament being  a  very  expensive  machine,  that  requires  a 
great  deal  of  oiling  and  greasing  at  the  people's  charge." 
But,  dark  as  the  future  was,  it  contained  an  element  of 
hope  which  escaped  these  sharp-sighted  observers. 
They  had  reckoned  without  the  country  gentlemen 
who  sate  for  their  own  boroughs,  and  the  still  greater 
country  gentlemen  who  had  been  chosen  by  the  coun- 
ties. Of  the  former  sort  there  were  many  more  than 
in  the  last  Parliament.  The  price  of  seats  was  lower 
by  from  thirty  to  forty  per  cent.,  and  was  soon  to  be 

1  Le  Roi  Frederic  au  Comte  de  Maltzau,   14  November,  1774. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  223 

lower  still ;  for  a  membership  of  Parliament,  like  a  com- 
mission in  the  army,  ruled  highest  in  time  of  assured 
peace,  and  fell  to  next  to  nothing  by  the  end  of  a  long 
war.  Gibbon,  who  was  a  country  gentleman  against 
his  will,  and  who  remained  one  no  longer  than  the  first 
moment  when  he  could  find  a  purchaser  for  the  last  of 
his  acres,  was  sent  to  Westminster  by  a  Cornish  kins- 
man at  the  general  election  of  1774.  For  some  time  he 
was  left  in  ignorance  whether  his  borough  would  be 
Liskeard  or  St.  Germans.  All  that  he  knew  was  that 
he  would  have  to  contribute  the  half  of  two  thousand 
four  hundred  pounds,  and  that  Mr.  Eliot  would  consent 
to  payment  being  postponed  until  his  second  son,  who 
was  a  lad  of  thirteen,  had  come  of  age.  Those  terms, 
even  as  between  relatives,  indicated  a  very  different 
state  of  the  market  from  that  which  prevailed  in  1768, 
when  George  Selwyn  got  nine  thousand  for  the  double 
seat  at  Ludgershall.  A  bill  for  twelve  hundred  pounds, 
or  twelve  thousand  either,  bearing  no  interest,  and  with 
eight  years  to  run,  would  have  been  within  the  compass 
even  of  Charles  Fox ;  and  there  is  no  wonder  that,  at 
such  prices,  a  patron  with  a  fair  share  of  public  spirit 
preferred  to  sit  himself,  or  to  keep  his  borough  within 
the  family.  Indeed,  a  man  who  cared  nothing  for  the 
commonwealth,  and  had  a  single  eye  to  the  main  chance, 
might  well  take  the  same  course ;  for  there  was  every 
prospect  that  a  member,  however  cheaply  he  got  into 
Parliament,  when  once  there  would  be  able  to  sell  him- 
self for  as  much  as  ever. 

The  county  members  formed  a  class  by  themselves, 
and  a  class  to  whom  the  nation  owes  an  incalculable 
debt.  They  were  great  proprietors  of  long  standing  in 
their  neighbourhood,  and  true  aristocrats,  indifferent  to 
the  frowns  and  favours  of  the  central  government ; 
while  they  were  as  proud  of  the  confidence  of  their  con- 
stituents as  of  the  extent  of  their  domains,  the  age  of 
their  castles,  and  the  running  of  their  horses.  The 
vast  sums  which  leading  families  spent  over  a  county 
contest  are  already  inconceivable  to,  us  who  hear  men 


224  THE  AMERICAN-  REVOLUTION 

of  property  grumble  at  having  to  find  twelve  or  fifteen 
hundred  pounds  where  their  ancestors  jauntily  laid  down 
twice  as  many  thousands.  The  explanation  is  that,  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  position  of  a  county  mem- 
ber was  valued  for  itself,  and  not  for  what  it  might 
lead  to.  A  rural  potentate,  who  sate  for  the  shire  in 
which  he  lived,  was  thought  as  good  as  a  lord,  and  was 
a  great  deal  better  liked,  on  his  own  countryside,  in  the 
London  clubs,  and  especially  within  the  walls  of  Par- 
liament. The  House  of  Commons  took  a  domestic 
interest  in  a  distinction  which  reflected  credit  on  itself. 
Mr.  Coke  of  Norfolk,  with  fifty  thousand  a  year  in  his 
county,  represented  it  for  more  than  fifty  years,  and  did 
not  accept  a  peerage  until  long  after  his  brother  mem- 
bers had  hailed  him  with  an  admiring  cheer  the  first 
time  that  he  walked  down  the  floor  after  having  had  a 
son  born  to  him  at  the  age  of  seventy-six.  The  belief 
that  the  Upper  and  Lower  Houses  ought  to  be  kept 
apart,  and  that  their  own  was  the  finer  institution 
of  the  two,  was  held  not  only  by  members  of  Parlia- 
ment, but  by  the  people  who  elected  them.  The  free- 
holders of  Somersetshire  went  so  far  as  to  pledge 
themselves  not  to  vote  for  the  brother  or  the  son 
of  a  peer  of  the  realm,  or  for  any  candidate  whom  a 
peer  supported.1  It  was  a  sentiment  not  of  recent,  and 
certainly  not  of  democratic,  origin ;  for  the  feeling  of 
Somersetshire  had  long  ago  been  expressed,  with  a 
vigour  that  left  nothing  to  be  desired,  by  the  most  cele- 
brated Tory  who  ever  killed  a  fox  within  its  confines. 
"It  is  true,"  said  Squire  Western,  "there  be  larger 
estates  in  the  kingdom,  but  not  in  this  county.  Besides, 
most  o'  zuch  great  estates  be  in  the  hands  of  lords,  and 
I  hate  the  very  name  of  themmum." 

The  honour  of  representing  a  shire  was  neither  con- 
ferred lightly  nor  retained  easily.  A  candidate,  whether 
he  presented  himself,  or  whether  he  was  put  forward  by 
a  junta  of  local  grandees,  if  his  name  was  unfavourably 

^History  of  the  Boroughs  of  Great  Britain,  London,  1794,  vol.  ii., 
p.  44. 


GENERAL   ELECTION  OF  1774  225 

received  by  the  freeholders  in  county-meeting  assem- 
bled, would  find  at  the  declaration  of  the  poll  that  he 
had  lost  his  money  and  his  labour.  Those  freeholders 
did  not  love  a  new  man ;  and  they  interpreted  the 
phrase  in  a  manner  creditable  to  themselves  and  to  the 
object  of  their  choice.  "I  cannot,"  Gibbon  wrote  to 
his  friend  Holroyd,  "yet  think  you  ripe  for  a  county 
member.  Five  years  are  very  little  to  remove  the  ob- 
vious objection  of  a  novus  homo,  and  of  all  objections  it 
is  perhaps  the  most  formidable.  Seven  more  years  of 
an  active  life  will  spread  your  fame  among  the  great 
body  of  the  Freeholders,  and  to  them  you  may  one  day 
offer  yourself  on  the  most  honourable  footing,  that  of  a 
candidate  whose  real  services  to  the  county  have  de- 
served and  will  repay  the  favour  which  he  then  solicits." 
The  county  electors  proved  a  man  before  they  took 
him;  but  none  the  less  they  were  careful  to  see  that  the 
services  which  he  promised  were  duly  given.  Confi- 
dence, with  them,  was  not  an  empty  word ;  and  they 
permitted  their  representative  an  almost  boundless  lati- 
tude of  action  at  Westminster,  demanding  only  that  he 
should  not  be  inactive.  They  expected  that  he  should 
attend  diligently  and  faithfully  to  the  business  of  the 
nation,  all  the  more  because  they  were  ready  to  allow 
that  he  understood  that  business  better  than  themselves. 
George  Selwyn,  as  a  borough  member,  soon  found  that 
his  constituents  troubled  themselves  very  little  about 
what  he  did,  or  left  undone,  so  long  as  he  refrained 
from  cutting  off  their  water  supply,  which  came  from  a 
hill  on  his  estate ;  and  was  at  the  pains  of  forwarding 
to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  with  the  compliments  of  the 
Corporation,  their  annual  offering  of  a  lamprey  pie. 
When  he  played  truant  during  a  political  crisis,  they 
were  personal  friends,  and  not  electors,  who  appealed 
to  his  loyalty  towards  George  the  Third  and,  where  that 
failed,  to  his  self-interest.  "You  are  now,"  wrote  Lord 
Bolingbroke  in  1767,  "attending  a  sick  friend;  but  I 
believe  the  Earls  will  think  you  have  neglected  the  first 
of  all  duties,  that  of  being  ready  to  vote  as  they  order. 

Q 


226  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

In  short,  George,  you  who  love  your  namesake,  and 
hate  to  see  a  poor  helpless  young  man  like  himself  op- 
pressed by  the  obstinacy  of  such  men  as  George  Gren- 
ville  and  Lord  Rockingham,  must  fly  to  his  assistance. 
Consider  the  obligations  you  have  to  him,  and  do  not 
let  him  be  forced  to  give  your  place  away  to  somebody 
who  will  attend."  When  Selwyn  was  longer  absent 
from  town  than  usual,  his  correspondents,  writing  with 
quite  sufficient  breadth  of  detail,  affected  to  believe  that 
he  was  detained  by  the  attractions  of  a  lady ;  —  a  sup- 
position which,  as  applied  to  him,  passed  in  that  cir- 
cle for  the  height  of  irony.  But  the  movements  of  a 
county  representative  were  subjected  to  a  much  more 
jealous  scrutiny.  "The  member  of  St.  Germans  might 
lurk  in  the  country,  but  the  Knight  of  Cornwall  must 
attend  the  House  of  Commons."  So  wrote  Gibbon 
about  his  cousin  Mr.  Eliot,  with  a  lazy  sense  of  supe- 
riority very  consolatory  to  a  man  of  letters  who  had  al- 
ready discovered  himself  to  be  no  debater,  and  was 
beginning  to  suspect  that  he  was  not  meant  for  a  mem- 
ber of  Parliament. 

The  great  country  gentlemen  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons entertained  the  prejudices  of  their  order;  and 
some  among  them  had  their  full  allowance  of  faults  as 
individuals.  But  they  felt  that  consciousness  of  respon- 
sibility which  animates  a  race  of  men  who,  over  and 
over  again,  and  time  out  of  mind,  have  decided  the  fate 
of  a  nation.  They  and  their  forerunners,  for  a  century 
and  a  half  back,  had  borne  their  share  in  those  succes- 
sive political  reactions  which,  in  defiance  of  strict  logic, 
had  saved  England  alternately  from  arbitrary  power 
and  factious  violence.  Foresight  was  not  their  strong 
point,  particularly  when  it  was  a  question  of  running 
counter  to  the  wishes  of  the  sovereign.  They  never 
had  been  very  quick  to  detect  and  withstand  the  early 
stages  of  a  dangerous  policy ;  but,  in  the  last  resort, 
they  were  not  going  to  see  their  country  ruined.  More- 
over their  hands  were  pure.  Quiet  folks  in  the  villages, 
who  were  well  aware  that  their  own  part  in  a  system 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  22*J 

based  upon  profusion  and  venality  was  to  get  nothing 
and  pay  for  everything,  never  felt  so  comfortable  as 
when  they  were  represented  at  St.  Stephen's  by  a  man 
who  desired  to  be  no  greater  or  richer  than  he  was, 
whether  the  motive  of  his  contentment  was  personal 
pride,  or  public  spirit,  or  both  of  them  together.  Those 
county  magnates,  who  likewise  were  county  members, 
detested  placemen  as  cordially  as  did  their  constituents. 
The  most  important  division,  both  in  its  moral  and 
political  aspects,  which  took  place  between  the  adoption 
of  the  Grand  Remonstrance  and  the  Second  Reading 
of  the  Great  Reform  Bill,  —  was  on  the  occasion  when, 
in  April,  1780,  Parliament  was  called  upon  to  declare 
that  the  growing  influence  of  the  Crown  was  disastrous 
to  the  nation.  In  that  division  sixty-two  among  the 
English  county  members  voted  for  the  Resolution,  and 
only  seven  against  it. 

Holding  their  heads  high,  these  men  did  not  esteem 
themselves  as  delegates,  and  still  less  as  courtiers,  but  as 
senators  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term  ;  and  not  even  the 
Roman  senate,  in  its  most  powerful  days,  was  more 
supremely  unconscious  of  the  pressure  of  outside  forces. 
Party  organisation,  as  we  know  it,  was  not  then  in  exist- 
ence. A  man  who  asked  nothing  from  the  Govern- 
ment was  free  to  take  his  own  line.  If  he  was  not 
himself  a  leader,  he  sought  for  direction  from  those  of 
his  colleagues  whose  judgment  he  trusted,  and  who  put 
forward  their  views  in  a  manner  which  pleased  his  taste 
and  pursuaded  his  reason.  The  very  last  quarter  to 
which  he  would  look  for  guidance  was  the  daily  press, 
at  a  time  when  reporters  were  almost  sure  to  be  excluded 
from  a  debate  on  any  question  by  which  opinion  was 
deeply  stirred,  and  when  editors  were  much  too  afraid 
of  the  Speaker's  Warrant  to  be  formidable  censors  or 
frank  and  effective  counsellors.  The  more  sessions  a 
House  of  Commons  had  sat;  the  more  good  speeches 
it  had  heard ;  and  the  further  it  was  removed  from  a 
general  election,  with  all  the  opportunity  for  the  exertion 
of  illegitimate  influence  which  at  such  a  time  a  bad  min- 


228  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

istry  enjoyed; — the  better  instrument  it  became  for 
conducting  the  business  of  the  country.  That  was  the 
deliberate  opinion  of  Burke ;  and  he  held  it  so  strongly 
that  he  refused  to  support  any  proposal  for  shortening 
the  duration  of  parliaments.  So  greatly,  he  said,  were 
members  affected  by  weighty  arguments,  cleverly  put, 
that  it  was  worth  any  man's  while  to  take  pains  to  speak 
well ;  and  if,  like  Charles  Fox,  he  spoke  well  whether 
he  took  pains  or  not,  such  a  Parliament  as  that  in  which 
he  now  found  himself  was  the  very  arena  for  an  orator. 
He  had  fallen  on  days  when  rhetoric  was  at  a  premium,  if 
only  it  was  spontaneous;  if  it  had  good  sense  behind  it ; 
and  if  the  quarter  from  which  it  came  was  favourably  re- 
garded by  those  for  whose  benefit  it  was  produced.  Aris- 
tocrats to  the  core,  they  lent  their  ears  the  more  readily  to 
one  of  themselves ;  and  the  titles  of  Fox  to  rank  as  an  aris- 
tocrat, though  abnormal,  were  generally  and  willingly  rec- 
ognised. His  grandfather  on  the  one  side  had  been  with 
Charles  the  First  on  the  scaffold.  His  great  great  grand- 
father on  the  other  side  had  stood  to  the  same  monarch  in  a 
much  nearer  relation ;  and  the  world  had  changed  too  little 
since  the  days  of  Monmouth  and  the  Duke  of  Berwick 
for  men  of  the  world  to  trouble  themselves  greatly  about 
the  obliquity  of  the  channel  through  which  royal  blood 
flowed  in  the  veins  of  one  whom  they  liked,  and,  to  their 
surprise,  were  beginning  even  to  respect.  Charles  had 
led  his  contemporaries,  and  only  too  many  of  his  elders, 
in  a  career  of  fashion  and  folly,  as  he  was  now  to  lead 
them,  with  a  pre-eminence  equally  undisputed,  along 
more  arduous  and  reputable  paths.  He  sprang  from  a 
line  of  statesmen,  conspicuous  in  place  and  long  in  years, 
though  not  in  numbers ;  for  Stephen  Fox  was  serving 
the  Crown  four  generations  before  ever  his  grandson 
entered  public  life.  That  grandson  had  now  the 
authority  of  an  old  member  in  a  fresh  Parliament, 
which  only  knew  his  scrapes  by  hearsay,  and  (what- 
ever might  be  the  case  with  its  successor)  was  not 
destined  to  witness  a  repetition  of  them.  Eloquent  and 
attractive,  kindly  and  familiar  with  high  and   humble, 


WINTER   SESSION   OF  1774  229 

he  was  inspired  by  a  great  cause  with  the  new  and 
needed  qualities  of  patience,  industry,  and  caution.  In 
six  years  he  acquired  over  his  colleagues  a  mastery  which, 
if  the  next  dissolution  had  been  deferred  for  another 
twelvemonth,  would  have  made  him,  (what  he  soon 
afterwards  became,  and  but  for  the  unwisdom  of  a 
moment  might  have  remained,)  the  master  of  the  coun- 
try. But  that  House  of  Commons,  before  it  passed 
away,  — teachable  by  events,  and  great  in  spite  of  errors, 
—  had  dealt  a  mortal  blow  to  the^  famous  system  which 
the  King  and  Bute,  with  the  potent  aid  of  Charles  Fox's 
father,  had  constructed.  It  was  a  system  which,  as  its 
one  achievement  of  the  first  order,  brought  about  the 
American  war,  and  made  England  sick,  once  and  for  all, 
of  the  very  name  of  personal  government. 

But  the  lesson  had  not  been  learned  when,  late  in 
November,  1774,  the  Parliament  met.  For  all  that  ap- 
peared on  the  surface,  there  was  nothing  to  distinguish 
the  occasion  from  others.  Few  signs  were  visible  of 
serious  dissatisfaction,  or  even  of  widespread  interest. 
The  King's  speech  began  as  usual  with  a  tirade  against 
the  province  of  Massachusetts,  and  a  guarded  allusion 
to  the  spirit  of  disaffection  prevalent  in  the  other  colo- 
nies. The  Opposition  went  to  work  in  their  desultory 
fashion.  They  confined  themselves  to  asking  for  copies 
of  the  official  correspondence  relating  to  America,  and 
for  leave  to  defer  making  up  their  minds  till  further 
information  had  been  given ;  but,  small  as  was  the  de- 
mand which  they  made  upon  the  courage  of  their  party, 
they  only  succeeded  in  rallying  seventy-three  adherents. 
Even  this  paltry  skirmish  was  as  jealously  guarded  from 
the  eyes  of  unprivileged  spectators  as  the  Potsdam  ma- 
noeuvres. The  precincts  were  cleared  of  all  strangers 
except  members  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  who  were 
allowed  what  was  for  them  the  very  superfluous  op- 
portunity of  witnessing  how  smoothly  things  went  in  a 
deliberative  assembly  which  was  managed  by  bribery. 
Charles  Fox  gave  the  new  House  a  first  taste  of  his 


230  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

quality,  and  denounced  the  closing  of  the  gallery  as  a 
mere  trick  to  stifle  inquiry ;  to  shorten  debate ;  and  to 
enable  ministers  to  maintain  a  convenient  silence,  and 
an  air  of  unconcern  which,  alarming  as  they  must  have 
known  the  state  of  the  nation  to  be,  with  characteristic 
effrontery  they  still  professed  to  feel. 

In  spite  of  all  precautions  against  publicity,  one  sen- 
tence got  abroad  which  threw  as  much  light  on  the  in- 
tentions of  the  Government  as  many  speeches  ;  for  Lord 
North  contrived  to  say  that  the  last  Parliament  had 
been  a  good  one.  He  said  it  with  Wilkes  opposite  him, 
whose  presence  in  the  existing  House  of  Commons  was 
an  unspoken  but  unanswerable  condemnation  of  the 
House  which  had  preceded  it.  For  six  years  the  law 
had  been  strained  and  violated,  popular  rights  had  been 
trampled  under  foot,  disorder  had  been  provoked  and 
blood  been  shed.  All  this  had  been  done  in  order  to 
establish  the  contention,  —  not  that  John  Wilkes  had 
been  unduly  elected,  —  but  that  he  was  unfit  and  un- 
worthy then,  or  ever,  to  be  a  member  of  Parliament. 
And  now  he  was  visible  on  his  bench,  with  his  colleague 
for  Middlesex  and  three  out  of  the  four  members  for 
London  city  round  him ;  all  of  whom  had  signed  a 
paper  which  virtually  was  an  agreement  to  do  as  Wilkes 
bade  them.  There  he  sate,  in  secure  anticipation  of 
that  popularity  which,  in  the  most  good-natured  of 
assemblies,  awaits  a  man  whom  it  has  taken  special  and 
notorious  pains  to  keep  outside  its  doors.  In  order  to 
prevent  his  election  George  the  Third  had  been  prepared 
copiously  to  administer  those  "  gold  pills  "  by  which,  in 
the  royal  view,  a  King  of  England  did  well  to  influence 
public  opinion.  He  had  compassed  town  and  country 
in  vain  to  find  Wilkes  an  opponent,  and  had  urged  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  set  the  Middlesex  election 
"again  on  float,"  after  Mr.  Robinson  himself  had  pro- 
nounced it  as  past  praying  or  paying  for.  It  was,  in- 
deed, a  pill  too  bitter  to  be  gilded.  Wilkes  could  not 
be  excluded  from  Parliament,  and  still  less  could  he  be 
ejected  when  once  he  had  got  there.    No  candidate  would 


WINTER  SESSION  OF  1774  23 1 

face  the  crowd  at  Brentford,  and  no  minister  cared  to 
have  Wilkes  and  America  on  his  hands  at  the  same 
moment.  There  was  something  heroic  in  the  compla- 
cent dignity  with  which  Samuel  Johnson  (writing,  it 
can  hardly  be  doubted,  on  a  hint  from  the  Minister) 
announced  that  the  most  awkward  of  customers  was 
at  last  to  be  left  with  all  the  honours  of  victory. 
"They,"  said  the  Doctor,  "who  are  still  filling  our 
ears  with  Mr.  Wilkes  lament  a  grievance  that  is  now 
at  an  end.  Mr.  Wilkes  may  be  chosen,  if  any  will 
choose  him ;  and  the  precedent  of  his  exclusion  makes 
not  any  honest  or  decent  man  think  himself  in  danger."1 
The  warning  which  the  situation  contained,  if  George 
the  Third  had  rightly  interpreted  it,  would  have  been 
cheaply  purchased  at  the  price  of  even  a  deeper  humili- 
ation. For  the  aspect  of  Wilkes  among  the  crowd  of 
members,  cheerfully  listening  to  the  King's  Speech  at 
the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords,  was  a  foretaste  of  the 
scene  eleven  years  later  on  when  John  Adams,  the  ac- 
credited ambassador  of  the  United  States,  presented 
himself  at  St.  James's  as  the  first  of  all  his  fellow-citizens 
to  stand  before  his  Majesty  in  a  diplomatic  character. 

On  the  first  day  that  Parliament,  and  most  of  all  a  new 
Parliament,  is  assembled  after  a  troubled  and  eventful  re- 
cess, inexperienced  politicians  who  expect  great  things 
are  surprised  to  find  that,  instead  of  being  very  noisy  and 
angry,  everybody  is  very  shy.  But  in  1774  the  deadness 
was  of  longer  duration  than  a  single  evening ;  for  it  was  in 
the  men  and  not  in  the  moment.  The  winter  session  ran 
its  course.  Estimates  were  brought  forward ;  soldiers, 
sailors,  and  monies  were  voted ;  and  week  after  week  of 
December  slipped  along  as  quietly  as  if  the  affairs  of  an 
empire,  at  peace  with  itself  throughout  its  borders,  were 
being  administered  by  a  cabinet  of  Solons.  The  fact 
was  that  the  principal  members  of  the  Opposition  were 
engaged  among  themselves  in  one  of  their  periodical 
discussions  of  a  proposal  which  had  for  them  an  extraor- 

1  The  Patriot,  1774. 


232  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

dinary  attraction,  and  on  which  they  expended  as  much 
ink  in  trying  to  convince  each  other  as  would  have 
covered  every  bookseller's  counter  in  the  kingdom  with 
pamphlets  snowing  up  the  policy  of  the  Government. 
That  proposal,  to  use  their  own  favourite  description, 
was  a  plan  of  non-attendance  for  Lord  Rockingham's 
friends.  The  notion  was  that  England  would  be  brought 
to  her  senses  by  the  contemplation  of  the  empty  benches. 
For  very  shame  she  would  gird  herself  to  the  task  of 
fighting  her  own  political  battles  until  such  time  as  she 
could  prevail  on  her  leaders  to  leave  their  tent  and 
place  themselves  once  more  at  the  head  of  a  resolute  and 
repentant  host  of  followers.  The  prospect  was  flatter- 
ing; and  the  Rockinghams  would  long  ago  have  tried 
the  experiment  but  for  Burke,  who  told  them  that  their 
secession  must  infallibly  result  in  the  Ministry  being 
more  free  than  ever  for  mischief,  and  in  they  themselves 
being  forgotten  by  the  public.  Till  the  Christmas  holi- 
days, however,  were  over  they  could  defend  their  inac- 
tivity by  the  excuse  that  they  were  waiting  for  papers. 
On  the  nineteenth  of  January  the  papers  came.  Lord 
North  presented  to  the  House  a  collection  of  letters,  not 
from  Massachusetts  only,  but  from  the  governors  of  every 
colony,  which  proved  beyond  doubt  or  question  that  the 
whole  continent  of  America,  from  New  Hampshire  to 
Georgia,  had  imitated  and  in  many  instances  outstripped 
Boston  in  what  the  King's  speech  had  described  as  vio- 
lent and  criminal  resistance  and  disobedience  to  the  law. 
The  case  was  presented  in  a  style  which  might  well 
arouse  the  envy  of  a  modern  politician  whose  vocation 
it  has  been  to  pick  out  the  essential  incidents  in  a  long 
story  from  among  the  tiresome  and  intricate  details 
with  which  the  omnivorous  appetite  of  Parliament  has 
for  many  years  past  compelled  the  Foreign  Office  and 
the  Colonial  Office  to  load  its  table.  With  no  official 
jargon,  but  in  plain  eighteenth-century  English,  such 
as  was  spoken  by  the  people  whose  deeds  were  being 
related,  and  by  the  members  of  Parliament  who  were 
to  read  the  papers,  the  Governors  and  Deputy  Govern- 


WINTER   SESSION   OF  1774  233 

ors  set  forth  their  budget  of  disastrous  and  ominous 
tidings.  They  told  how  the  tea-ships  had  been  turned 
away  from  every  port  where  they  showed  themselves ; 
how  the  farmers  were  drilling  and  arming,  and  were 
sinking  the  boats  and  overturning  the  carts  which  con- 
veyed forage  and  provisions  for  the  use  of  the  army ; 
how  the  judges  had  cried  off  from  their  duties,  and  the 
King's  writ,  (very  unlike  his  Custom-house  officers,)  had 
altogether  ceased  to  run ;  how  the  Governor  of  New 
Hampshire  had  just  completed  his  admirable  arrange- 
ments for  supplying  the  wants  of  the  garrison  in  Bos- 
ton when  the  people  of  Portsmouth,  his  own  principal 
trading-town,  rose  upon  him,  stormed  his  arsenal,  and 
carried  off  a  hundred  barrels  of  powder.  The  one 
bright  spot  was  in  Virginia,  where,  when  the  House  of 
Burgesses  had  turned  themselves  into  a  Convention  and 
met  without  leave  from  the  Governor,  the  Headmaster 
of  the  Grammar-school  had  refused  to  preach  them  a 
sermon.  But,  as  the  patriots  were  much  better  pro- 
vided with  eloquence  than  with  ammunition,  the  news 
from  Williamsburg  did  not  counterbalance  the  serious 
character  of  the  news  from  Portsmouth.  Graver  by  far 
than  any  acted  manifestations  of  discontent  and  estrange- 
ment were  the  Resolutions  which  had  been  passed  at 
Philadelphia  by  that  Congress  in  which  Patrick  Henry 
and  the  Adamses  had  been  spokesmen,  and  Washing- 
ton a  guiding  spirit.  What  purpose,  human  or  divine, 
could  be  served  by  trying  to  dragoon  such  a  population, 
so  led  and  so  minded,  living  along  fifteen  hundred  miles 
of  coast  across  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean,  into  pay- 
ing a  threepenny  duty  into  the  British  Treasury  ? 

It  was  a  problem  striking  enough  to  impress  the  Poet 
Laureate.  On  the  last  Birthday  William  Whitehead 
had  made  an  appeal  to  the  loyalty  of  Massachusetts 
under  the  guise  of  prophecy :  — 

The  prodigal  again  returns, 

And  on  his  parent's  neck  reclines. 

With  honest  shame  his  bosom  burns, 
And  in  his  eye  affection  shines. 


234  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  now  thought  it  time  to  sing  a  word  in  season  to  the 
address  of  his  Sovereign,  and  in  1775  he  thus  invoked 
the  powers  who  guide  the  hearts  of  kings :  — 

Beyond  the  vast  Atlantic  tide 
Extend  your  healing  influence  wide 

Where  millions  claim  your  care. 
Inspire  each  just,  each  filial  thought, 
And  let  the  nations  round  be  taught 

The  British  oak  is  there. 

The  advice  was  well  meant;  but  it  fell  as  flat  as  the 
lines  in  which  it  was  couched.  Mason,  a  stout  Whig, 
has  commended  Whitehead  for  insinuating  sound  coun- 
sel into  the  royal  ear  in  the  shape  of  praise  for  wisdom 
and  clemency  which  the  King,  unfortunately,  had  not 
the  slightest  intention  of  meriting.  But  the  Laureates 
of  the  eighteenth  century  were  not  of  those  to  whom 
men  look  for  a  contribution  to  the  stock  of  political 
wisdom  ;  nor,  except  in  the  case  of  Warton,  for  any 
other  wisdom.  Doctor  Johnson,  who  liked  Whitehead's 
politics  even  less  than  his  poetry,  called  his  odes  "  in- 
supportable nonsense " ;  and  posterity,  irrespective  of 
politics,  has  agreed  with  Johnson.  Whitehead  won  his 
spurs,  (if  that  phrase  can  be  applied  to  the  rider  of 
such  a  Pegasus,)  by  a  satire  the  title  of  which  was  "  An 
Epistle  on  the  Danger  of  Writing  in  Verse."  It  was 
his  earliest  serious  performance;  and  it  would  have 
been  well  if  the  reflections  which  the  theme  suggested 
had  warned  him  never  to  attempt  another. 

So  far  as  rhymes  can  throw  light  upon  the  relations 
of  George  the  Third  to  the  colonies,  mankind  will  neg- 
lect Whitehead,  and  turn  to  the  Birthday  Ode  of  another 
bard  who  was  not  of  the  stuff  out  of  which,  in  his  day, 
a  poet  laureate  was  cut.  What  Robert  Burns  thought 
about  the  American  war,  and  the  policy  of  its  authors, 
may  be  seen  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  stanzas  of  "  The 
Dream  "  ;  written,  or  professing  to  be  written,  on  the 
fourth  of  June,  1786.  The  poem  is  as  like  Aristophanes 
as  any  piece  in  our  language.     There  is  nothing  in  the 


' 


WINTER   SESSION   OF  1774  235 

choruses  of  the  Old  Comedy  more  Attic,  in  every  essen- 
tial quality,  than  the  estimate  of  those  Ministers  whom 
the  King  delighted  to  honour,  the  compliment  to  Chat- 
ham, the  admonition  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the 
advice  to  the  young  Princesses. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  KING  AND  LORD  CHATHAM.  FOX  AND  GEORGE 
SELWYN.  FOX  COMES  TO  THE  FRONT.  THE  AMERICAN 
FISHERIES 

The  King  had  long  ago  settled  his  policy.  "  I  am 
clear,"  he  announced  to  Lord  North  in  the  previous 
September,  "  that  there  must  always  be  one  tax  to  keep 
up  the  right,  and  as  such  I  approve  of  the  Tea  Duty." 
To  secure  this  object  he  was  prepared  to  fight,  and  was 
in  a  hurry  to  begin.  Ten  days  before  Parliament  met, 
the  first  instalment  of  the  American  news  had  already 
reached  him.  "  I  am  not  sorry,"  he  wrote,  "  that  the 
line  of  conduct  seems  now  chalked  out,  which  the  en- 
closed despatches  thoroughly  justify.  The  New  Eng- 
land Governments  are  in  a  state  of  rebellion.  Blows 
must  decide  whether  they  are  to  be  subject  to  this 
country  or  independent."  He  made  no  attempt  to 
conceal  his  satisfaction  when  he  learned  that  the  quar- 
rel could  not  be  patched  up.  Yet  he  did  not,  like 
Napoleon,  love  war  for  its  own  sake ;  nor,  like  Louis 
the  Fourteenth,  was  he  unscrupulously  eager  to  make  his 
country  great  and  his  own  name  great  with  it.  Almost 
as  soon  as  he  mounted  the  throne  he  had  given  a  con- 
vincing proof  of  his  indifference  to  personal  glory  and 
national  aggrandisement.  At  a  time  of  life  when  the 
desire  of  fame  is  a  sign  of  virtue,  or  at  worst  a  venial 
fault,  during  the  height  of  the  most  triumphant  war  in 
which  Britain  has  been  engaged,  he  had  thrust  from 
power  the  ablest  war-minister  whose  deeds  have  been 
recorded  in  her  history.  He  deserted  the  greatest  ally 
we  ever  possessed,  at  the  exact  moment  of  his  greatest 

236 


THE  KING  AND    CHATHAM  237 

need.  To  the  end  of  his  days  Frederic  of  Prussia  did 
not  forget  the  pang  of  that  appalling  and  unexpected 
blow ;  and  we  were  soon  to  learn  that,  when  he  remem- 
bered an  injury,  he  was  not  of  a  nature  to  forgive  it. 
The  warlike  promptings  which  actuated  George  the 
Third  were  neither  ambitious  nor  patriotic,  but  political. 
He  looked  on  the  Americans  not  as  foreign  enemies 
arrayed  against  England,  but  as  Englishmen  who  wanted 
more  liberty  than  he  thought  was  good  for  them ;  and 
he  sent  his  fleets  and  his  armies  against  them  just  as 
he  would  have  ordered  his  Footguards  to  support  the 
constables  in  clearing  the  street  of  a  mob  of  Wilkites. 
On  one  point,  and  one  point  alone,  the  King  was  in 
agreement  with  the  great  statesman  out  of  whose  con- 
trol, as  the  first  act  of  his  reign,  he  had  taken  the  des- 
tinies of  the  country.  Chatham,  like  George  the  Third, 
regarded  the  colonists  as  compatriots.  In  his  sight  they 
were  Englishmen,  who  did  not  choose  to  be  taxed  with- 
out being  represented ;  Whigs,  who  had  not  abandoned 
the  principles  of  the  Great  Revolution ;  fellow-citizens 
who  could  not  be  subjugated  without  prospective,  and 
even  imminent,  danger  to  the  liberties  of  both  our  own 
islands.  For  Ireland  had  as  much  at  stake  as  Great 
Britain,  and  Irishmen  of  all  creeds  and  classes  were 
alive  and  awake  to  the  consequences  which  would  ensue 
at  home  if  the  cause  of  America  was  overborne  and 
ruined.  In  such  a  contest,  (so  Chatham  insisted,)  every 
man  had  a  right,  or  rather  every  man  was  under  an 
obligation,  to  choose  his  side  in  accordance  with  the 
political  faith  which  was  in  him.  This  was  not  a  struggle 
against  an  external  foe,  but  a  dispute  within  our  own 
family.  "  I  trust,"  he  wrote  on  the  Christmas  eve  of 
1774,  "that  it  will  be  found  impossible  for  freemen  in 
England  to  wish  to  see  three  millions  of  Englishmen 
slaves  in  America."  A  month  afterwards  he  had  read 
the  parliamentary  papers,  with  the  insight  of  one  who 
had  received  and  answered  a  thousand  despatches  from 
the  same  regions.  "  What  a  correspondence  !  "  he  ex- 
claimed.    "  What  a  dialogue  between  Secretary  of  State 


238  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  General  in  such  a  crisis  !  Could  these  bundles  reach 
the  shades  below,  the  remarks  of  Ximenes  and  of  Cortez 
upon  them  would  be  amusing."  He  need  not  have 
brought  Ximenes  in.  When  Chatham  closed  the  vol- 
ume, a  yet  stronger  ruler,  and  one  who  knew  even  better 
how  to  write  to  colonies  and  how  to  fight  for  them,  had 
made  himself  master  of  the  miserable  narrative. 

Already,  before  he  knew  the  particulars,  the  heart  of 
Chatham  was  too  hot  for  silence.  As  the  doom  against 
America,  (to  use  his  own  phraseology,)  might  at  any 
hour  be  pronounced  from  the  Treasury  Bench,  no  time 
was  to  be  lost  in  offering  his  poor  thoughts  to  the  public, 
for  preventing  a  civil  war  before  it  was  inevitably  fixed. 
On  the  first  day  that  the  Lords  met  after  Christmas  he 
moved  to  address  his  Majesty  to  withdraw  the  troops 
from  Boston,  in  order  to  open  the  way  towards  a  happy 
settlement  of  the  dangerous  troubles  in  America.  It 
was  not  a  tactical  success.  Chatham  had  told  Rocking- 
ham beforehand  that  he  intended  to  pronounce  himself 
against  insisting  on  that  theoretical  right  to  tax  America 
which  Rockingham's  own  government  had  asserted  in 
the  Declaratory  Act  of  1766.  Some  of  the  Whigs  were 
unwilling  to  throw  over  a  Statute  which  in  its  day  had 
formed  part  of  a  great  compromise.  Others  were  pre- 
pared to  consider  the  question  of  repealing  the  Act, 
whenever  that  proper  time  arrived  which  in  politics  is 
always  so  very  long  upon  its  journey.  The  more  pru- 
dent of  them  exerted  themselves  to  suppress  any  public 
manifestation  of  the  annoyance  which  their  party  felt. 
"  My  Lord,"  wrote  the  Duke  of  Manchester  to  his 
leader,  "  you  must  pardon  my  freedom.  In  the  present 
situation  of  affairs  nothing  can  be  so  advantageous  to 
Administration,  nothing  so  ruinous  to  opposition,  nothing 
so  fatal  to  American  liberty,  as  a  break  with  Lord  Chat- 
ham and  his  friends.  I  do  not  mean  to  over-rate  his 
abilities,  or  to  despair  of  our  cause,  though  he  no  longer 
existed ;  but,  while  the  man  treads  this  earth,  his  name, 
his  successes,  his  eloquence,  the  cry  of  the  many,  must 
exalt  him  into  a  consequence   perhaps  far  above  his 


THE  KING   AND    CHATHAM 


239 


station.''  But  the  resentment  of  the  Rockinghams  was 
all  the  more  bitter  because  they  had  "to  keep  it  among 
themselves.  In  their  communications  with  each  other 
they  charged  Chatham  with  the  two  unpardonable  crimes 
of  forcing  their  hand,  and  taking  the  wind  out  of  their 
sails ;  and  in  the  House  they  supported  him  reluctantly, 
and  in  small  numbers. 

But  that  was  all  of  little  moment  compared  with  the 
fact  that  a  famous  and  faithful  servant  of  England  had 
made  known  to  all  and  sundry  his  view  of  the  conduct 
which,  at  that  complicated  crisis,  loyalty  to  England 
demanded.  William  Pitt,  then  in  his  sixteenth  year, 
had  helped  his  father  to  prepare  for  the  debate ;  a 
process  which,  according  to  the  experience  of  others 
who  enjoyed  the  same  privilege,  consisted  in  hearing 
a  grand  speech  delivered  from  an  arm-chair,  entirely 
different  in  arrangement,  in  wording,  and  in  everything 
except  the  doctrine  which  it  enforced,  from  the  series 
of  grand  speeches  which  next  day  were  declaimed  in 
public  when  the  orator  had  his  audience  around  him. 
"The  matter  and  manner,"  (so  the  lad  wrote  to  his 
mother  on  the  morning  after  the  discussion,)  "were 
striking ;  far  beyond  what  I  can  express.  It  was  every- 
thing that  was  superior;  and,  though  it  had  not  the 
desired  effect  on  an  obdurate  House  of  Lords,  it  must 
have  had  an  infinite  effect  without  doors,  the  bar  being 
crowded  with  Americans.  Lord  Suffolk,  I  cannot  say 
answered  him,  but  spoke  after  him.  My  father  has 
slept  well,  but  is  lame  in  one  ankle  from  standing  so 
long.  No  wonder  he  is  lame.  His  first  speech  lasted 
over  an  hour,  and  the  second  half  an  hour ;  surely  the 
two  finest  speeches  that  ever  were  made  before,  unless 
by  himself."  The  most  notable  passage  was  that  in 
which  Chatham  declared  that  the  cause  of  America  was 
the  cause  of  all  Irishmen,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike, 
and  of  all  true  Whigs  in  England ;  and  in  his  mouth 
the  name  of  Whig  included  every  man  who  was  not  a 
friend  to  arbitrary  power.  The  colonists  were  our 
countrymen  and,  if  we  persisted  in  treating  them  as 


240  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

aliens  and  foes,  the  perils  which  awaited  us  were  incal- 
culable. Foreign  war,  (so  he  told  the  House  of  Lords,) 
was  at  our  door.  France  and  Spain  were  watching  our 
conduct,  and  waiting  for  the  maturity  of  our  errors. 
The  argument  was  one  not  to  be  employed  lightly ;  but 
if  ever  a  statesman  was  justified  in  referring  to  our 
neighbours  across  the  British  Channel  as  our  natural 
enemies  it  was  at  a  period  when  we  had  been  at  war 
with  France  for  thirty  years  out  of  the  last  eighty-five, 
and  were  still  to  be  at  war  with  her  for  twenty-five  years 
out  of  the  next  forty.  And  if  ever  there  was  a  man 
who  might,  without  a  sense  of  abasement,  refer  to  danger 
from  abroad  as  an  additional  reason  for  dealing  justly 
with  our  own  people,  it  was  the  minister  who  had  fought 
France  until  he  had  landed  her  in  such  a  plight  that  no 
one,  unless  our  government  was  imprudent  to  madness, 
could  foresee  the  time  when  she  would  be  in  a  position  to 
fight  us  again. 

Any  one  who  objected  to  Chatham's  attitude  on  the 
American  question  was  at  liberty  to  term  him  a  poor 
patriot  and  a  bad  citizen ;  and  whatever  reproach  at- 
tached itself  to  his  fame  must  be  shared  by  those  who 
thought  with  him.  Charles  Fox  was  not  easily  abashed, 
even  when  he  was  in  worse  company  than  Chatham's ; 
and  at  no  time  of  his  life  did  he  care  what  names  he 
was  called  as  long  as  the  course  of  action  which  earned 
them  was  such  that  he  could  defend  in  the  face  of  day. 
He  did  not  shrink  from  defining,  as  explicitly  and  clearly 
as  he  stated  everything,  the  governing  motive  by  which 
his  conduct  during  those  trying  years  was  determined. 
"  I  hope  that  it  will  be  a  point  of  honour  among  us  all 
to  support  the  American  pretensions  in  adversity  as 
much  as  we  did  in  their  prosperity,  and  that  we  shall 
never  desert  those  who  have  acted  unsuccessfully  from 
Whig  principles,  while  we  continue  to  profess  our  ad- 
miration of  those  who  succeeded  in  the  same  principles 
in  1688."  That  was  how  he  wrote  to  his  familiars  in 
October,  1776,  when  the  colonists  were  on  the  edge  of 
destruction,  and  when  the  liberties  of  England  seemed 


THE  KING  AND    CHATHAM  24 1 

worth  but  a  very  few  years'  purchase  in  the  view  of 
some  who  were  neither  fools  nor  cowards.  Among  them 
was  Horace  Walpole,  who  pronounced  himself  unable 
to  conceive  how  a  friend  of  British  freedom  could  view 
with  equanimity  the  subjection  of  America.  He  little 
thought,  Walpole  said,  that  he  should  have  lived  to  see 
any  single  Englishman  exulting  over  the  defeat  of  our 
countrymen,  when  they  were  fighting  for  our  liberty  as 
well  as  for  their  own.  Lord  Chatham  was  not  such  an 
Englishman,  nor  Charles  Fox  either.  They  both  of 
them  looked  upon  the  conflict  as  a  civil  war,  in  which 
no  man  was  justified  in  ranking  himself  against  those 
whom  in  his  conscience  he  believed  to  be  in  the  right. 
But  when  France  stepped  in,  and  our  country  was  in 
danger,  Fox  took  his  place  amongst  the  foremost,  — 
nay,  it  may  be  said,  as  the  foremost,  —  of  Britain's  de- 
fenders ;  for  no  public  man,  out  of  office,  has  ever  before 
or  since  played  so  energetic  and  effective  a  part  in  the 
management  of  a  great  war.  "Attack  France,"  he 
cried,  "for  she  is  your  object.  The  war  against  Amer- 
ica is  against  your  own  countrymen ;  that  against  France 
is  against  your  inveterate  enemy  and  rival."  In  a  series 
of  speeches,  replete  with  military  instinct,  he  argued  in 
favour  of  assuming  the  offensive  against  the  fresh  as- 
sailants who  came  crowding  in  upon  a  nation  which 
already  had  been  fighting  until  it  had  grown  weary  and 
disheartened.  Aggressive  action,  (so  he  never  ceased 
repeating,)  was  alike  dictated  by  the  necessities  of  the 
situation,  and  by  the  character,  the  spirit,  and  the  tradi- 
tions of  our  people.  He  urged  the  ministry,  with  mar- 
vellous force,  knowledge,  and  pertinacity,  to  rescue  the 
navy  from  the  decay  into  which  they  had  allowed  it  to 
sink.  When  the  French  and  Spanish  fleets  rode  the 
Channel,  with  a  superiority  in  ships  of  the  line  of  two 
to  one,  his  anxiety  carried  him  and  kept  him  as  close 
to  the  scene  of  action  as  the  most  enterprising  of  lands- 
men could  penetrate.  He  haunted  the  country  houses 
and  garrison  towns  of  the  south-western  coast,  and  lived 
much  on  shipboard,  where,  as  any  one  who  knows  sailors 


242  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

could  well  believe,  he  was  a  general  favourite.  He 
shared  the  bitter  mortification  which  his  gallant  friend 
the  future  Lord  St.  Vincent  felt  when  kept  in  harbour 
at  such  a  moment ;  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  entertain 
a  hope  of  finding  himself,  a  cheery  and  popular  stowa- 
way, in  the  thick  of  what  promised  to  be  the  most  des- 
perate battle  which,  on  her  own  element,  England  would 
ever  have  fought.  He  sympathised  warmly  with  those 
of  his  comrades  and  kinsmen  who,  having  refused  to 
serve  against  America,  were  rejoiced  at  the  prospect  of 
active  employment  when  France  entered  the  field;  just 
as  a  royalist,  who  would  have  cut  off  his  right  hand 
rather  than  fire  a  pistol  for  the  Parliament  at  Dunbar 
or  Worcester,  might  have  been  proud  to  do  his  share 
among  Cromwell's  soldiers  when  they  were  driving  the 
Spanish  pikemen  across  the  sandhills  at  Dunkirk.  With 
a  steady  grasp,  and  unerring  clearness  of  vision,  Fox 
steered  his  course  through  intricate  and  tempestuous 
waters ;  and  succeeded  in  reconciling,  under  difficulties 
as  abstruse  as  ever  beset  a  statesman,  his  fidelity  to 
a  political  creed  with  the  duty  which  he  owed  to  his 
country. 

It  was  the  ill  fate  of  Charles  Fox  that,  through  the 
stirring  period  which  lay  in  front  of  him,  he  was  ex- 
posed to  the  close  observation  of  a  man  who  made  it 
his  profession  to  collect  and  catalogue  the  follies  of  the 
town.  We  have  long  been  familiar  with  the  series  of 
letters  in  which  the  hardest  livers  and  loosest  talkers 
of  London,  from  1745  onwards,  confessed  their  own 
frailties,  and  reported  and  magnified  those  of  their 
neighbours,  to  George  Selwyn.  Now,  of  late  months, 
publicity  has  been  conferred  on  Selwyn's  own  letters  to 
the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  —  a  man  as  amiable  and  honourable 
as  any  who  passed  his  time  in  the  midst  and  after  the 
fashion  of  that  untoward  generation.1  Charles  Fox 
from  the  first  exercised  over  the  writer  of  those  letters 

1  The  Manuscripts  of  the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  preserved  at  Castle  Howard. 
Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.    Fifteenth  Report,  Appendix,  Part  VI. 


FOX  AND   SELWYN 


243 


a  strong  fascination.  Selwyn  saw  again  the  father  in 
the  son.  He  used  to  declare  that  the  only  minister  of 
state  with  whom,  in  the  course  of  his  life,  he  had  ever 
spent  an  hour  pleasantly  was  Lord  Holland;1  and  he 
now  began  to  spend  in  Charles's  company  as  many 
hours  as  the  young  fellow  would  consent  to  bestow  on 
him.  "  I  have  passed  two  evenings  with  him,"  he  wrote 
in  1774,  "at  supper  at  Almack's,  and  never  was  any- 
body more  agreeable,  and  the  more  so  from  his  having 
no  pretensions  to  it."  Selwyn  was  glad  to  dine  at 
Charles's  table,  whenever  the  brokers  had  left  him  a 
piece  of  furniture  that  he  could  call  his  own;  but  all  the 
while  that  he  was  listening  to  the  young  man's  sallies 
he  watched  him  like  a  cat.  And  then  he  would  sit 
down  at  home,  with  Charles's  claret  and  venison  in  him, 
and  pour  out  on  paper  his  budget  of  tattle.  It  was  not 
from  any  special  dislike  of  the  lad,  whom  on  the  whole 
he  loved ;  but  from  the  attraction  which  anything  dis- 
agreeable and  discreditable  has  for  a  veteran  gossip. 

Selwyn's  friendship  for  Lord  Carlisle  was  genuine 
and  active ;  and  he  exchanged  with  him  anxious  and 
business-like  communications  relating  to  the  danger  in 
which  the  peer  for  some  space  of  time  lived  on  account 
of  his  having  stood  surety  for  Charles  and  Stephen  Fox. 
But  early  in  the  year  1774  Lord  Holland  made  the  sac- 
rifices necessary  for  relieving  his  sons,  and  the  friends 
of  his  sons,  from  the  obligations  in  which  they  had  in- 
volved themselves.  Thenceforward  Selwyn  employed 
himself,  quite  gratuitously,  in  recording  Charles  Fox's 
perversities  and  absurdities,  with  which  he  had  no  spe- 
cial concern,  and  which  most  certainly  he  was  not  in  a 
position  to  reprove.  There  was  plenty  of  material  with 
which  to  amuse  himself.  He  never  wearied  of  relating 
how  few  hours  Fox  consumed  in  bed,  and  how  many  at 
the  gaming  table ;  how  between  the  deals  he  whispered 
over  his  shoulder  to  the  party-whip  about  details  of  busi- 
ness in  the  House  of  Commons ;  how  his  books  and 

1  Carlisle  Manuscripts,  p.  666. 


244  TIiE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

pictures  were  sold  up,  and  how  hard  it  was  to  get  money 
out  of  his  hands  when  any  money  was  there.  One 
letter  narrates  that  Charles  and  Fitzpatrick  won  many 
thousands  of  pounds  by  keeping  a  faro  bank  as  part- 
ners, and  then  hastened  to  lose  all  their  gains  at  quinze. 
Another  refers  to  the  doubts  which  had  arisen  whether 
Fox  could  continue  to  sit  in  Parliament  and  draw  the 
pension  for  which,  to  oblige  the  Government,  he  had  ex- 
changed his  Clerkship  of  the  Pells  in  Ireland.  Selwyn 
describes  the  excitement  with  which  the  young  man  ran 
from  one  lawyer  to  another  to  procure  their  opinions  on 
the  case ;  and  the  flightiness  that  sent  him  off  to  New- 
market, (where  he  lost  everything  he  possessed,  for  he 
appears  at  that  moment  to  have  been  in  cash,)  "  leaving 
all  the  opinions  to  themselves." 

Much  of  this  was  probably  true;  and,  where  true,  it 
was  rather  laughable  and  very  regrettable.  But  there 
was  another  side  to  the  story.  Selwyn  greatly  admired 
the  skill  of  Fox  in  aiming  his  rhetorical  shafts,  even 
when  they  were  directed  at  the  leaders  whom  Selwyn 
followed,  and  against  the  continuance  of  the  sinecures 
out  of  the  emoluments  of  which  he  paid  his  way.  But 
he  had  studied  the  seamy  side  of  human  nature  too 
long  and  too  exclusively  to  perceive  the  higher  attri- 
butes by  which  the  young  statesman  rapidly  and  surely 
acquired  favour  with  eminent  politicians  of  blameless 
character.  It  needed  something  more  solid  than  mere 
talents  and  graces  to  become  the  chief  of  a  connection 
which  included  Rockingham  and  Richmond,  Portland 
and  Burke,  Savile,  Dunning,  and  the  Cavendishes.  These 
men  were  older  than  Fox ;  and,  in  the  company  of  his 
elders,  even  one  who  is  by  nature  incapable  of  showing 
himself  different  from  what  he  really  is  takes  care  to 
appear  at  his  best.  But  where  moral  qualities  are  in 
question  the  young  are  never  deceived  by  a  contempo- 
rary ;  and  Charles  was  not  only  loved,  but  trusted  and 
respected,  by  all  of  his  party  who  were  within  five  years 
of  his  age.  The  secret  of  his  influence  is  revealed  by 
the  tone  of  the  appeals  and  expostulations  which  kept 


FOX  AND   SELWYN 


245 


his  political  comrades  as  nearly  as  possible  up  to  his 
own  standard  of  public  duty.  Amongst  the  earliest  of 
such  communications  is  a  letter  of  November,  1775.  It 
touches  a  note  seldom  reached  in  the  summonses  which 
a  Parliamentary  manager  sends  out  on  the  eve  of  a 
critical  Division.  "Dear  Ossory,"  Fox  wrote,  "  as  you 
desire  me  to  let  you  know  what  is  likely  to  come  on 
next  week,  I  am  glad  to  inform  you  that,  on  Friday 
next,  Burke  will  move  to  bring  in  a  bill  to  secure  the 
colonies  against  Parliamentary  taxation,  and  to  repeal 
the  obnoxious  laws.  I  say  I  am  very  glad  that  Burke 
is  to  move  such  a  bill,  because  it  will  be  the  fairest  test 
in  the  world  to  try  who  is  really  for  war  and  who  for 
peace.  I  am  sure,  my  dear  Ossory,  if  you  do  think 
seriously  enough  of  this  matter  to  let  your  opinion 
regulate  your  conduct,  it  is  impossible  but  you  must 
consider  this  as  the  true  opportunity  of  declaring  your- 
self. And  indeed,  if  party  does  not  bind  me  very  much 
more  than  I  am  aware  of,  this  is  an  occasion  where  a 
man  not  over-scrupulous  ought  to  think  for  himself. 
It  does  not  need  surely  the  tenth  part  of  your  good 
sense  to  see  how  cruel  and  intolerable  a  thing  it  is  to 
sacrifice  thousands  of  lives  almost  without  a  prospect 
of  advantage." 

The  esteem  in  which  Fox  was  held  most  certainly 
did  not  in  all  quarters  result  from  the  blindness  of  par- 
tisanship. Men  who  observed  him  from  the  opposite 
benches  in  the  House  of  Commons,  if  only  they  had  an 
eye  for  what  was  good  and  great,  gradually  came  to 
perceive  that  goodness  with  him  was  only  a  matter  of 
time,  and  that  greatness  was  there  already.  Gibbon, 
who  eagerly  sought  his  society,  obtained  enough  of  it 
in  the  course  of  that  Parliament  to  make  up  his  mind 
that  Fox's  character  was  as  attractive  as  his  abilities 
were  commanding ;  and  he  never  altered  that  opinion. 
"  I  admired,"  the  historian  wrote  some  years  later  on, 
"the  powers  of  a  superior  man  blended  with  the  soft- 
ness and  simplicity  of  a  child.  Perhaps  no  human 
being  was  ever  more  perfectly  exempt  from  the  taint 


246  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  malevolence,  vanity,  or  falsehood."  Fox  was  chal- 
lenged to  a  duel  by  William  Adam,  then  a  fiery  sup- 
porter of  Lord  North,  and  presented  himself,  an  easy 
mark,  to  his  antagonist's  pistol.  His  chivalrous  and 
jaunty  bearing  on  the  scene  of  action  first  revealed  to 
Adam  what  a  good  fellow  he  had  undertaken  to  kill. 
He  began  to  hear  the  Whig  leader's  speeches  with 
indulgence,  and  soon  with  approbation,  and  before  very 
long  became  his  sworn  friend  and  staunch  supporter. 
Fox's  eloquence  was  appreciated  at  the  full  value  in 
Selwyn's  own  circle.  "  Charles  Fox,  who  did  not  speak 
as  well  as  he  usually  does  according  to  the  opinion 
of  many,  yet  in  mine  is  astonishingly  great.  I  never 
attended  to  any  speech  half  so  much,  nor  ever  did  I 
discover  such  classical  passages  in  any  modern  per- 
formance. Besides  I  own  he  convinced  me." :  That 
is  a  passage  in  a  letter  which  was  discovered  among 
Selwyn's  papers.  Selwyn  made  no  objection  to  hear- 
ing the  praises  of  the  orator  sounded ;  but  he  lost 
patience  when  one  of  his  own  political  allies  expressed 
regret  that  Charles  had  taken  the  line  which  he  did  on 
public  matters,  " because  he  was  such  a  good  man."2 
Charles,  at  all  events,  was  good  enough  to  please  a 
moralist  of  a  very  different  school  from  Selwyn  or 
any  of  those  who  were  in  Selwyn's  intimacy.  Samuel 
Johnson,  who  knew  the  young  man  well  and  viewed 
him  kindly  and  wisely,  testified  to  his  regard  for  him 
in  a  phrase  which  every  well-wisher  of  Fox's  reputation 
is  delighted  to  recall.  "The  King,"  he  said,  "  is  my 
master,  but  Fox  is  my  friend ;  "  and  the  friendship  of 
Johnson  was  a  prize  not  lightly  awarded. 

In  his  best  points  the  Charles  Fox  with  whom  history 
is  acquainted  resembled  no  public  men  who  came  before 
him.  His  broad  humanity,  his  devotion  to  great  causes, 
were  those  of  a  statesman  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  were  not  handed  down  to  him  by  any  predecessor. 
His   merits  were   peculiarly  his  own,  and  his  gravest 

1  Anthony  Storer  to  Lord  Carlisle.      Carlisle  Manuscripts,  p.  541. 

2  Carlisle  Manuscripts,  p.  550. 


FOX  AND   SELWYN  247 

faults  were  due  to  his  education.  Like  Byron,  but  at 
a  still  earlier  age,  he  was  "  let  loose  on  the  world  with- 
out a  martingale."  At  five  and  twenty,  and  from  that 
to  two  and  thirty,  he  lived  as  his  father  had  taught  him, 
and  with  the  example  of  that  father's  surviving  friend 
always  in  evidence.  Selwyn  at  fifty  and  sixty  and  up 
to  the  verge  of  seventy,  (for  he  was  Charles's  senior  by 
thirty  years,)  led  an  existence  which  was  not  of  a  nature 
to  qualify  him  for  a  censor  of  others.  The  central 
business  of  his  life,  at  which  he  showed  himself  remark- 
ably clever,  was  to  find  wealthy  bidders  for  the  repre- 
sentation of  his  family  borough,  and  to  preserve  his 
own  seat  at  Gloucester.  On  the  possession  of  that  seat 
his  bread  depended;  for  he  was  well  aware  that  none 
but  a  senator  was  worth  buying.  To  secure  this  object 
he  spared  no  pains,  and  shrank  from  hardly  any  ex- 
tremity of  discomfort.  "You  know  me  very  well," 
he  wrote  to  Carlisle  in  July,  1774,  "in  thinking  that 
my  heart  fails  me  as  the  time  of  my  going  to  Gloucester 
approaches.  I  made  a  very  stout  resistance  a  fortnight 
ago,  notwithstanding  Harris's  importunate  summons; 
and  now  he  plainly  confesses  that  my  coming  down 
upon  that  pretended  meeting  would  have  been  'nuga- 
tory '  as  he  calls  it.  The  Devil  take  them  ;  I  have 
wished  him  and  his  Corporation  in  Newgate  a  thousand 
times.  But  there  will  be  no  trifling  after  the  end  of 
this  next  week.  The  Assizes  begin  on  Monday  seven- 
night.  Then  the  Judges  will  be  met,  a  terrible  show, 
for  I  shall  be  obliged  to  dine  with  them,  and  be  in  more 
danger  from  their  infernal  cooks  than  any  of  the  crimi- 
nals who  are  to  be  tried."  Between  elections  he  gave 
silent  votes  in  support  of  the  Ministry  which  fed  him, 
and  as  few  of  those  as  he  dared  to  give ;  —  not  on 
account  of  any  scruple  of  conscience,  but  from  sheer 
laziness.  The  culminating  misfortune  of  his  career  was 
when  Burke,  in  the  interest  of  Economical  Reform, 
made  an  inroad  among  his  patent  places,  the  number 
and  the  multifarious  nature  of  which  were  an  abuse 
notorious  even  in  that  venal  age.     "The  loss,"  he  wrote 


248  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  Lord  Carlisle,  "of  three  thousand  pounds  a  year 
coming  after  debts  created  by  imprudence,  and  which 
might  have  otherwise  have  been  soon  liquidated,  is  a 
blow  which  I  confess  that  I  was  not  prepared  for ;  and, 
if  I  could  not  feel  it  for  myself,  I  must  have  felt  it  for 
you."  That  was  the  system  on  which,  at  sixty-two,  he 
still  managed  his  affairs  and  regulated  his  private 
expenditure. 

Selwyn's  amusements  were  of  a  piece  with  his  serious 
avocations.  Like  Fox  and  Fitzpatrick  he  held  a  faro 
bank,  and  "  picked  up,  by  fifty  pounds  at  a  time,  a  few 
hundreds."  His  only  chance,  he  explained,  of  keeping 
early  hours  and  getting  a  good  night's  rest,  was  that  his 
bank  should  lose ;  because  then  the  players  went  off  to 
bed  with  their  winnings.  What  he  meant  by  early 
hours  may  be  judged  from  his  account  of  one  evening, 
when  he  supped  at  White's,  sate  up  till  nearly  one 
o'clock  telling  two  young  noblemen  "  old  stories,"  and 
then  opened  his  bank  and  won  a  hundred  and  twenty 
guineas.  That  bank  he  regarded  as  his  salvation,  and 
wrote  of  it  thankfully  and  with  something  very  like 
unction.  "  I  shall  keep,"  he  said,  "  to  this  trade,  once 
my  better  guide."1  It  was  a  resolution  often  broken, 
with  consequences  which  vexed  himself  but  rather 
diverted  his  acquaintances.  "  Selwyn,"  Fox  wrote  in 
1778,  "has  been  cut  up  for  a  large  sum,  after  fattening 
for  a  month."  Three  years  afterwards  Anthony  Storer 
told  Lord  Carlisle  that  their  esteemed  friend  had  lost 
very  heavily,  and  was  so  tearful  that  no  one  liked  to  ask 
him  any  question  about  the  matter.  So  lived  Selwyn, 
at  a  time  when  he  was  tortured  by  gout  and  threatened 
with  dropsy;  taking  opiates  and  bark,  and  courses  of 
baths,  and  refusing  pleasant  invitations  to  places  where 
no  money  was  to  be  won  or  lost,  on  account  of  his 
"damned  spasmodic  complaints."  He  might  well  have 
spared  his  strictures  on  the  shortcomings  of  those  who 
were  young  enough  to  be  his  children. 

1  Carlisle  Manuscripts,  pp.  755,  484,  and  491. 


FOX  AND   SELWYN  249 

Fox,  to  the  loss  and  grief  of  his  country,  never 
reached  sixty;  but  when  he  was  very  far  short  of  that 
age  his  course  of  life  was  already  settled  and  unvaried. 
During  the  first  decade  of  the  French  Revolution  all 
was  dark  and  stormy  outside  his  home.  He  was  ex- 
cluded from  office,  with  no  hope  whatsoever  of  seeing 
the  triumph  of  the  principles  for  which  he  combated 
and  suffered.  Calumny  was  his  daily  portion;  while 
humbler  people  of  the  same  way  of  thinking  as  himself 
were  exposed  to  peril  and  oppression  from  which,  in 
spite  of  his  utmost  endeavours,  he  could  do  little  to 
protect  them.  But  within  his  garden-gate  all  was 
ordered,  equable,  serene,  and  cheerful.  His  domain 
was  a  pretty  tableland  overlooking  the  Thames,  where 
it  skirts  the  green  and  gold  of  the  spacious  Chertsey 
meadow.  A  love  of  domesticity,  counteracted  often 
until  middle  age  by  the  charms  of  pleasure  and  ambi- 
tion, grew  at  last  to  be  his  permanent  and  all-engrossing 
passion.  He  grudged  every  hour  that  was  not  spent  on 
St.  Anne's  Hill,  among  his  arbours  and  birds ;  with 
Lucretius  and  Boccaccio,  Homer,  Dryden,  and  Cowley, 
and  his  wife  always  at  hand  to  listen  as  he  read  or  trans- 
lated them.  "Of  politics,"  he  wrote  when  he  was  five 
and  forty,  "  I  am  now  quite  sick,  and  attend  to  them 
only  because  I  think  it  a  duty  to  do  so,  and  feel  that  it 
would  be  unbecoming  my  character  to  quit  them  at 
such  a  moment.  Here  I  am  perfectly  happy.  Idle- 
ness, fine  weather,  Ariosto,  a  little  Spanish,  and  the 
constant  company  of  a  person  whom  I  love,  (I  think,) 
more  and  more  every  day  and  hour,  make  me  as  happy 
as  I  am  capable  of  being,  and  much  more  so  than  I 
could  hope  to  be  if  politics  took  a  different  turn." 

When  that  turn  showed  signs  of  arriving,  Fox  was 
not  prepared  to  greet  it.  In  the  spring  of  1801  Lord 
Holland,  whom  he  loved  as  he  would  have  loved  a  son, 
had  written  to  suggest  that,  as  public  affairs  were  look- 
ing brighter,  his  uncle  ought  to  take  a  house  in  London. 
"  Never  did  a  letter,"  was  the  reply,  "  arrive  in  a  worse 
time,  my  dear  young  one,  than  yours  this  morning ;  a 


2  50  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

sweet  westerly  wind,  a  beautiful  sun,  all  the  thorns  and 
elms  just  budding,  and  the  nightingales  just  beginning 
to  sing  ;  though  the  blackbirds  and  thrushes  would  have 
been  quite  sufficient  to  have  refuted  any  arguments  in 
your  letter."  To  watch  that  young  one  "going  on  to 
fight  stoutly  in  the  House  of  Lords  alone  "  ;  to  walk  out 
shooting,  of  which  as  time  went  forward  he  became 
fonder  than  ever ;  to  correspond  with  Gilbert  Wake- 
field on  nice  points  of  classical  scholarship ;  to  enter- 
tain old  friends  at  his  own  house,  and  occasionally  and 
somewhat  reluctantly  to  return  their  visits ;  —  those 
were  the  pastimes  which  long  ago  had  driven  gaming 
and  raking  from  his  favour  and  out  of  his  habits.  For 
himself  Fox  asked  nothing  more,  and  nothing  better, 
than  he  had  ;  but  he  was  sorry  for  his  allies  and  sup- 
porters, baffled  in  their  political  aspirations,  and  disap- 
pointed of  honourable  opportunities  for  active  usefulness. 
He  deplored  the  barbarities  which  the  French  Conven- 
tion perpetrated  in  the  name  of  liberty.  He  pitied  the 
victims  of  that  cruel,  and  (even  from  the  ministerial 
point  of  view)  quite  unnecessary  persecution  which 
Dundas  promoted,  and  Pitt  to  the  detriment  of  his 
fame  sanctioned  and  defended  "The  horrors  in 
France,"  Fox  wrote  in  1793,  "grow  every  day  worse. 
The  transactions  at  Lyons  seem  to  surpass  all  their 
former  wickedness.     Do  you  remember  Cowper? 

"O  for  a  lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness  ! 

It  is  a  much  more  natural  wish  now  than  when  it  was 
uttered.  At  home  we  imitate  the  French  as  well  as  we 
can  and,  in  the  trials  and  sentences  of  Muir  and  Palmer 
in  particular,  I  do  not  think  we  fall  very  far  short  of 
our  original;  excepting  inasmuch  as  transportation  to 
Botany  Bay  is  less  severe,  (and  that  to  a  gentleman  is 
not  much,)  than  death.  You  will  easily  believe  I  shall 
not  acquiesce  in  this  tyranny  without  an  effort,  but  I 
am  far  from  sanguine  as  to  success.  However,  one 
must  do  one's  duty.     Good  God !  that  a  man  should  be 


FOX   COMES    TO    THE   FRONT  25 1 

sent  to  Botany  Bay  for  advising  another  to  read  Paine's 
book,  or  for  reading  the  Irish  Address  at  a  public 
meeting !  " 

Those,  in  his  maturer  years,  were  Fox's  joys  and 
sorrows.  That  was  what,  not  very  late  in  life,  he  be- 
came ;  and  such  he  continued  until  a  calm  and  noble 
death  closed  his  story.  But  at  the  commencement  of 
1775  he  was  still  sadly  behindhand  in  respect  to  the 
private  virtues  and  proprieties.  As  a  public  man,  how- 
ever, he  already  was  formidable  by  the  virility  of  his 
powers  and  the  fixity  of  his  purpose.  With  his  imme- 
diate object  plain  before  him,  he  went  forth  to  take 
his  place  in  a  world  which  was  too  wise  to  consider 
youth  a  drawback.  He  was  of  the  age  at  which,  ten 
years  later  on,  Pitt  superseded  him  in  his  position  as 
the  first  public  man  in  Europe,  and  at  which  after  an- 
other ten  years  Napoleon  in  his  turn  superseded  Pitt. 
Of  the  disadvantages  which  hampered  others,  none 
existed  for  Fox.  He  was  not,  like  the  Rockinghams, 
bound  by  his  antecedents  to  maintain  against  America 
an  abstract  right  of  taxation,  which  could  not  be  en- 
forced except  by  the  sword  which  they  thought  it  a 
crime  to  draw.  He  was  not,  like  Chatham,  separated 
from  the  majority  of  the  Opposition  by  mutual  dislike 
and  distrust.  Fox  was  quite  ready  to  pull  with  the 
Whigs,  if  only  they  would  do  their  share  of  work ;  and 
he  already  was  busy  in  the  task  of  keeping  them  up  to 
the  collar.  "  I  am  clear,"  he  wrote  to  Burke,  "  that  a 
secession  is  now  totally  unadvisable,  and  that  nothing 
but  some  very  firm  and  vigorous  step  will  be  at  all 
becoming." 

By  this  time  many  people  were  looking  about  to  see 
where  firmness  and  vigour  could  be  found;  for  the  news 
from  America  had  begun  to  arouse  the  classes  which 
worked  the  hardest,  and  paid  the  most,  to  a  perception 
of  the  dangers  towards  which  the  country  was  being 
hurried.  "The  landed  interest,"  so  Camden  told  Chat- 
ham before  the  middle  of  February,  "  is  almost  alto- 


252  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

gether  anti-American,  though  the  common  people  hold 
the  war  in  abhorrence,  and  the  merchants  and  trades- 
men for  obvious  reasons  are  likewise  against  it."  Burke 
complained  to  Mr.  Champion,  the  constituent  whom  he 
honoured  with  his  confidence,  that  if  men  with  business 
interests  had  interfered  decisively  when  in  the  previous 
winter  the  American  question  became  acute,  concilia- 
tory measures  would  most  certainly  have  been  adopted. 
Now,  he  said,  they  were  beginning  to  stir  because  they 
began  to  feel.  It  so  happens  that  the  exact  date  is 
known  when  the  true  state  of  matters  was  first  borne 
in  upon  the  public  mind.  A  letter  from  London  to  a 
gentleman  in  New  York,  dated  the  sixth  of  December, 
1774,  runs  as  follows:  "This  day  there  was  a  report 
current  that  the  Congress  of  the  States  of  America  had 
adjourned,  having  fixed  on  stopping  all  imports  into 
America  from  Great  Britain  the  first  of  this  month. 
From  curiosity  I  strolled  upon  'Change,  and  for  the 
first  time  saw  concern  and  deep  distress  in  the  face  of 
every  American  merchant.  This  convinced  me  of  the 
truth  of  what  I  may  have  said  before,  that  the  mer- 
chants will  never  stir  till  they  feel;  and  every  one 
knows  that  the  manufacturers  will  never  take  the  lead 
of  the  merchants."  1 

The  public  despatches  were  alarming  enough  to  those 
who  reflected  that  Governors  and  Lieutenant-Governors 
would  naturally  have  put  the  best  face  possible  on  a 
situation  which  they  themselves  had  done  much  to 
create.  But  those  despatches  did  not  tell  the  worst. 
Men  could  still  write  freely  to  each  other  across  the 
Atlantic ;  and  the  advices  received  by  city  merchants  and 

1  The  style  of  the  letter  to  New  York,  with  the  curious  similarity  in  cer- 
tain expressions  to  those  employed  in  the  letter  to  Champion,  renders  it 
more  than  possible  that  it  was  written  by  Burke,  who  three  years  before 
had  been  appointed  agent  to  the  Assembly  of  New  York  with  a  salary  of 
500/.  a  year.  It  is  true  that  he  despatched  a  long  and  very  famous  epis- 
tle from  his  home  in  Buckinghamshire  on  the  fifth  of  December  ;  but  he 
was  speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  evening,  and  again  on  the 
sixth,  and  might  well  have  gone  on  'Change  on  the  morning  of  the  second 
day  before  writing  the  letter  to  the  gentleman  in  New  York. 


FOX  COMES   TO    THE  FRONT  2 S3 

bankers  were  of  a  complexion  to  fill  everybody,  except 
speculators  for  a  fall,  with  a  feeling  nothing  short  of  blank 
dismay.  No  official  papers  from  Maryland  had  been 
printed,  and  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  no  news 
was  good  news  as  far  as  that  colony  was  concerned ; 
but  before  December  ended  it  came  to  be  known  that 
a  principal  seaport  of  Maryland  had  placed  itself  in  line 
with  Boston.  When  the  brig  Peggy  Stewart  of  Lon- 
don, having  on  board  two  thousand  pounds  "  of  that 
detestable  weed  tea,"  arrived  at  Annapolis,  Messrs.  Will- 
iam and  Stewart,  to  whom  the  cargo  was  consigned, 
put  their  hands  to  a  paper  acknowledging  that  they  had 
committed  an  act  of  most  pernicious  tendency  to  the 
liberties  of  America.  The  same  gentlemen  then  went 
on  board  the  said  vessel,  with  her  sails  set  and  colours 
flying,  and  voluntarily  set  fire  to  the  tea.  In  a  few 
hours  the  whole  freight,  and  the  ship  with  it,  had  been 
consumed  by  the  flames  in  the  presence  of  a  great  mul- 
titude of  spectators.  When  the  letter  notifying  this 
transaction  to  the  London  correspondents  of  the  unfort- 
unate firm  was  passing  up  and  down  Threadneedle 
Street,  many  a  warm  city  man  must  have  felt  a  shiver 
go  through  him.  In  the  same  month  a  Whig  noble- 
man received  an  account  of  the  warlike  preparations  in 
America,  written  at  Philadelphia  by  General  Lee,  whose 
reputation  in  fashionable  military  circles  lent  weight  to 
language  which,  like  himself,  was  less  soldierly  than 
soldatesque.  "  What  devil  of  a  nonsense  can  instigate 
any  man  of  General  Gage's  understanding  to  concur  in 
bringing  about  this  delusion  ?  I  have  lately,  my  Lord, 
run  through  almost  the  whole  colonies  from  the  North 
to  the  South.  I  should  not  be  guilty  of  an  exaggeration 
in  asserting  that  there  are  200,000  strong-bodied  active 
yeomanry,  ready  to  encounter  all  hazards.  They  are 
not  like  the  yeomanry  of  other  countries,  unarmed  and 
unused  to  arms.  They  want  nothing  but  some  arrange- 
ment, and  this  they  are  now  bent  on  establishing.  Even 
this  Quaker  province  is  following  the  example.  I  was 
present  at  a  review  at  Providence  in  Rhode  Island,  and 


254  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

really  never  saw  anything  more  perfect.  Unless  the 
banditti  at  Westminster  speedily  undo  everything  they 
have  done,  their  royal  paymaster  will  hear  of  reviews 
and  manoeuvres  not  quite  so  entertaining  as  those  he  is 
presented  with  in  Hyde  Park  and  Wimbledon  Common." 
The  time  was  too  surely  approaching  when  com- 
munications addressed  from  America  to  gentlemen  and 
noblemen  in  London  would  never  get  further  than  the 
secret  room  in  the  Post  Office  ;  and  colonists  who  wished 
for  peace  hastened,  while  the  avenues  were  open,  to  en- 
lighten and  admonish  those  English  public  men  whom 
they  could  hope  to  influence.  At  the  end  of  1774  a 
member  of  the  British  Parliament  was  informed  in  two 
letters  from  Pennsylvania  that  there  were  gunsmiths 
enough  in  the  Province  to  make  one  hundred  thousand 
stand  of  arms  in  one  year,  at  twenty-eight  shillings 
sterling  apiece ;  that  the  four  New  England  colonies, 
together  with  Virginia  and  Maryland,  were  completely 
armed  and  disciplined ;  and  that  nothing  but  a  total 
repeal  of  the  Penal  Acts  could  prevent  a  civil  war  in 
America.  The  writer  dealt  as  freely  with  large  figures 
as  General  Lee ;  but  he  understood  his  countrymen 
better  in  a  case  where  the  merits  of  that  officer  were 
concerned.  For  the  letters  went  on  to  explain  that  the 
colonies  were  not  so  wrapped  up  in  the  General's  military 
accomplishments  as  to  give  him,  when  it  came  to  choos- 
ing the  Commander-in-Chief,  a  preference  over  Colonel 
Putnam  and  Colonel  Washington,  who  had  won  the 
trust  and  admiration  of  the  continent  by  their  talents 
and  achievements.  "There  are  several  hundred  thou- 
sand Americans  who  would  face  any  danger  with  these 
illustrious  heroes  to  lead  them.  It  is  to  no  purpose  to 
attempt  to  destroy  the  opposition  to  the  omnipotence  of 
Parliament  by  taking  off  our  Hancocks,  Adamses,  and 
Dickinsons.  Ten  thousand  patriots  of  the  same  stamp 
stand  ready  to  fill  up  their  places."  Dickinson  himself, 
writing  not  to  England,  but  about  England,  summed  up 
the  view  of  the  best  and  wisest  men  on  his  side  of  the 
controversy.     "I  cannot  but  pity,"  he  said,  "a  brave 


FOX   COMES    TO    THE  FRONT  2$$ 

and  generous  nation  thus  plunged  in  misfortune  by  a 
few  worthless  persons.  Everything  may  be  attributed 
to  the  misrepresentations  and  mistakes  of  Ministers,  and 
universal  peace  be  established  throughout  the  British 
world  only  by  the  acknowledgment  of  the  truth  that 
half  a  dozen  men  are  fools  or  knaves.  If  their  charac- 
ter for  ability  and  integrity  is  to  be  maintained  by 
wrecking  the  whole  empire,  Monsieur  Voltaire  may 
write  an  addition  to  the  chapter  on  the  subject  of  'Little 
things  producing  great  events.'  "  1 

From  this  time  forwards  there  was  a  growing  disposi- 
tion in  the  House  of  Commons  to  take  America  seri- 
ously ;  and  there  was  a  man  in  it  determined  never 
again  to  let  the  question  sleep.  On  the  second  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1775,  the  Prime  Minister  moved  an  Address  to  the 
King,  praying  his  Majesty  to  adopt  effectual  measures 
for  suppressing  rebellion  in  the  colonies.  Later  in  the 
evening  a  member  rose  who,  in  the  style  of  solemn  cir- 
cumlocution by  which  the  chroniclers  of  proceedings  in 
Parliament  appeared  to  think  that  they  kept  themselves 
right  with  the  law,  was  described  as  "  a  gentleman  who 
had  not  long  before  sat  at  the  Treasury  Board,  from 
wThence  he  had  been  removed  for  a  spirit  not  sufficiently 
submissive,  and  whose  abilities  were  as  unquestioned 
as  the  spirit  for  which  he  suffered."2  Fox,  (for  Fox  of 
course  it  was),  proposed  an  amendment  deploring  that 
the  papers  laid  upon  the  table  had  served  only  to  con- 
vince the  House  that  the  measures  taken  by  his 
Majesty's  servants  tended  rather  to  widen  than  to  heal 
the  unhappy  differences  between  Great  Britain  and 
America.  That  was  the  turning  point  of  his  own 
career,  and  the  starting  point  for  others  in  a  hearty, 
fearless,  and  sustained  opposition  to  the  policy  of  the 
Government.  The  effect  of  his  oratory  is  established  by 
various  competent  authorities,  from  the  official  reporter 
who  broke  off  to  remark  that  Mr.  Charles  Fox  spoke 

1  The  extracts  given  in  this  and  the  preceding  paragraphs  are  all  from 
the  American  Archives. 

2  The  Annual  Register  for  1775,  chapter  v. 


256  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

better  than  usual,1  to  Walpole,  who  records  in  his  jour- 
nals that  the  young  statesman  entered  into  the  whole 
history  and  argument  of  the  dispute  with  force  and 
temper,  and  made  the  finest  figure  he  had  done  yet. 

But  the  most  lively  and  convincing  testimony  is  found 
in  a  letter  written  by  a  great  man  who  on  this  occasion 
learned,  finally  and  resignedly,  how  hard  it  is  even  to 
begin  making  a  great  speech.  Gibbon  had  been  getting 
ready  for  the  debate  during  the  whole  of  the  Christmas 
holidays  :  studying  the  parliamentary  papers  as  minutely 
as  if  they  had  been  the  lost  books  of  Dion  Cassius  ;  talk- 
ing for  four  hours  on  end  with  one  of  the  agents  from 
Massachusetts;  and  " sucking  Governor  Hutchinson  very 
dry,"  with  as  much  probability  of  arriving  at  a  just  con- 
clusion as  a  Roman  Senator  who  took  his  idea  of  the 
Sicilian  character  from  a  private  conversation  with 
Verres.  But,  when  the  hour  came,  he  felt  that  he  him- 
self was  not  the  man  for  it.  Throughout  the  Amend- 
ment on  the  Address,  and  the  report  of  the  Address,  he 
sate  safe  but  inglorious,  listening  to  the  thunder  which 
rolled  around  him.  The  principal  antagonists  on  both 
days,  he  said,  were  Fox  and  Wedderburn ;  of  whom  the 
elder  displayed  his  usual  talents,  while  the  younger, 
embracing  the  whole  vast  compass  of  the  question 
before  the  House,  discovered  powers  for  regular  debate 
which  neither  his  friends  hoped,  nor  his  enemies  dreaded. 
On  the  first  day,  when  Fox  discoursed  for  an  hour  and 
twenty  minutes,  his  contribution  to  the  discussion  is 
represented  in  the  Parliamentary  History  by  an  abstract 
of  five  lines,  and  on  the  second  day  his  name  is  not 
even  mentioned ;  while  Wilkes  obtained  six  columns, 
and  Governor  Johnston  nine.  It  is  evident,  and  indeed 
was  sometimes  as  good  as  confessed  in  a  foot-note,  that 
in  those  early  and  artless  days  of  reporting  a  speaker 
got  back  in  print  what  he  gave  in  manuscript.  Fox 
would  as  soon  have  thought  of  writing  down  what  he 
was  going  to  say  as  of  meeting  a  bill  before  it  fell  due ; 

1  The  Parliamentary  History  of  England,  vol.  xvii.,  p.  227. 


FOX  COMES   TO    THE  FRONT  2 $7 

and  the  rapid  growth  of  his  fame  may  be  estimated  by 
a  comparison  between  the  reports  of  1775  and  those  of 
1779  and  1780.  Before  the  Parliament  was  dissolved, 
his  more  important  speeches  were  reproduced  without 
the  omission  of  a  topic  and,  so  far  as  the  existing  re- 
sources of  stenography  admitted,  without  the  abbrevia- 
tion of  a  sentence. 

Fox  took  the  sense  of  the  House  on  his  Amendment, 
and  had  reason  to  be  satisfied  with  the  result.  He  had 
been  long  enough  a  member  of  Parliament  to  have 
learned  that,  in  politics,  all's  well  that  ends  pretty  well. 
The  minority  mustered  over  a  hundred ;  a  number  ex- 
ceeding by  forty  the  best  division  which,  in  the  former 
Parliament,  was  obtained  against  the  worst  of  the  Amer- 
ican measures.  It  would  have  been  reckoned  a  most 
weighty  protest  on  any  occasion  when  any  House  of 
Commons  has  been  invited  to  take  steps  which  responsi- 
ble Ministers  affirm  to  be  necessary  for  vindicating  the 
honour  and  securing  the  predominance  of  the  country. 
But  it  was  doubly  significant  in  that  age  of  intimidation 
and  bribery.  All  who  voted  on  the  one  side  were  per- 
fectly well  aware  that  in  so  doing  they  cut  themselves 
off  from  the  hope  of  their  sovereign's  favour,  or  even 
of  his  forgiveness.  And  meanwhile  a  full  half  of  those 
who  voted  on  the  other  side  were  drawing  public  salary 
without  rendering  any  public  service  except  that  of  doing 
as  they  were  bid;  or  were  fingering  money  which  had 
passed  into  their  pockets  from  the  Exchequer  by  methods 
that  in  our  day  would  have  been  ruinous  both  to  him  who 
received  and  him  who  bestowed.  The  King  pronounced 
the  majority  "very  respectable,"  as  to  him,  in  both  senses 
of  the  word,  it  no  doubt  seemed.  So  pleased  was  he  that 
he  kindly  condoled  with  his  Minister  on  having  been 
kept  out  of  bed,  (which  in  the  case  of  Lord  North  was 
a  very  different  thing  from  being  kept  awake,)  till  so 
late  an  hour  as  three  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

That  Minister,  however,  was  less  easily  satisfied.  He 
now  knew  himself  to  be  face  to  face  with  a  very  differ- 
ent  opposition   from    anything  which   in   the   existing 


258  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Parliament  he  had  hitherto  encountered.  He  recog- 
nised the  quarter  from  which  vitality  had  been  infused 
into  the  counsels  and  procedures  of  his  adversaries. 
Before  a  fortnight  had  elapsed  he  came  down  to  the 
House  with  a  Resolution  promising  in  the  name  of  the 
Commons  that  any  American  colony,  in  which  the  As- 
sembly consented  to  vote  money  for  certain  stated  pub- 
lic purposes,  should  be  exempted  from  the  liability  to 
be  taxed  by  the  British  Parliament.  Every  man,  in  that 
Parliament  and  outside  it,  saw  that  the  plan  was  spe- 
cially and  carefully  framed  to  meet  the  argument  on 
which,  in  his  recent  speeches,  Charles  Fox  had  founded 
the  case  that  he  had  so  brilliantly  advocated.  Governor 
Pownall,  who  immediately  followed  North,  stated  in 
well-chosen  words  which  no  one  ventured  to  contradict 
that  the  Resolution  was  a  peace  offering  to  the  young 
ex-minister.1  Such  a  recognition  would  have  been  a 
high  compliment  from  any  man  in  office  to  any  private 
member ;  but  when  paid  by  a  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury 
to  a  former  subordinate,  who  had  left  his  Board  within 
the  twelvemonth,  and  had  been  attacking  him  ever  since, 
it  was  a  piece  of  practical  adulation  which  put  to  a 
searching  and  unexpected  proof  both  the  strength  of  con- 
viction and  the  presence  of  mind  of  him  to  whom  it  was 
addressed. 

On  neither  of  the  two  points  was  Fox  unequal  to 
the  test.  While  Pownall  was  speaking  he  had  time  to 
decide  on  his  line  of  action,  the  importance  of  which  he 
at  once  discerned.  It  was  his  first  chance  of  showing 
that  he  possessed  the  qualities  of  a  true  parliamentary 
leader,  who  could  make  the  most  of  a  tactical  situation 

1  "An  honourable  gentleman,  in  a  late  debate,  certainly  was  the  first 
and  the  only  one  to  hit  upon  the  real  jet  of  the  dispute  between  his  country 
and  America.  He  very  ably  stated  that  the  reason  why  the  colonies  ob- 
jected to  the  levying  taxes  for  the  purpose  of  a  revenue  in  America  was 
that  such  revenue  took  out  of  the  hands  of  the  people  that  control  which 
every  Englishman  thinks  he  ought  to  have  over  that  government  to  which 
his  rights  and  interests  are  entrusted.  The  mode  of  appropriation  specified 
in  this  resolution  takes  away  the  ground  of  that  opposition."  —  The  Parlia- 
mentary History  of  England,  Feb.  20,  1775. 


FOX  COMES   TO    THE  FRONT  259 

without  surrendering  in  the  smallest  particular  his  loy- 
alty to  a  great  cause.  He  commenced  his  remarks  by 
congratulating  the  public  on  the  change  in  the  Prime 
Minister's  attitude.  The  noble  Lord,  who  had  been 
all  for  violence  and  war,  was  treading  back  in  his  own 
footprints  towards  peace.  Now  was  seen  the  effect 
which  a  firm  and  spirited  opposition  never  failed  to 
produce.  The  noble  Lord  had  lent  his  ear  to  reason ; 
and,  if  the  minority  in  that  House  persevered  in  sup- 
porting the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  colonies,  the 
process  of  his  conversion  would  go  on  apace.  He  had 
spoken  of  the  Americans  with  propriety  and  discrimina- 
tion. He  had  refused  to  allow  that  they  were  rebels ; 
and  evenjto  Massachusetts  he  would  gladly  open  a  door 
through  which  she  might  return  to  her  allegiance.  He 
had  distinctly  stated  that  Great  Britain,  dealing  as  one 
nation  according  to  diplomatic  usage  deals  with  another, 
had  at  the  outset  demanded  more  than  in  the  end  she 
would  insist  on  exacting;  and,  once  that  principle  ad- 
mitted, the  noble  Lord  would  be  as  much  inclined  on 
a  future  day  to  recede  from  what  he  proposed  now,  as 
now  he  was  ready  to  give  up  that  which  he  had  before 
so  strenuously  defended.  But  for  the  present  the  noble 
Lord  had  not  gone  far  enough.  He  aimed  at  standing 
well  with  two  sets  of  people  whose  views  were  irrec- 
oncileable :  —  the  colonists  who  were  resolved,  under 
no  conditions,  to  admit  the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax 
them ;  and  the  supporters  of  the  Government  who  were 
equally  determined,  in  every  contingency,  to  assert  that 
right  and  to  exercise  it.  The  noble  Lord  had  wished 
to  content  both  parties,  and  he  had  contented  neither. 
On  the  countenances  of  gentlemen  opposite  the  orator, 
so  far  as  he  was  able  to  read  them,  could  descry  no 
symptoms  of  satisfaction ;  and  the  Americans,  it  was 
only  too  certain,  must  and  would  reject  the  offer  with 
disdain. 

The  speech  was  marked  by  the  highest  art,  —  that 
of  saying  precisely  what  the  speaker  thought,  in  the 
plainest  language,   and   without   a   syllable   over.      A 


26o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

scene  ensued  when  he  resumed  his  place  which  was 
long  remembered  within  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
has  occupied  a  space  in  English  and  American  histories 
out  of  all  proportion  to  its  intrinsic  consequence,  except 
so  far  as  it  discredited  the  Prime  Minister,  and  estab- 
lished the  position  and  authority  of  Fox.  It  was  one 
of  those  rare  moments  when  a  great  party,  in  a  tumult 
of  indignant  surprise,  shakes  off  the  control  of  those 
to  whom  it  is  accustomed  to  look  for  guidance ;  when 
the  Ministers  sit  on  thorns,  or  jump  up,  each  in  his 
turn  only  to  confound  confusion,  and  attract  on  to 
his  own  head  a  share  of  the  impertinences  with  which 
the  air  is  swarming ;  and  when  an  opposition  feels  itself 
repaid  in  the  wild  joy  of  a  single  hour  for  long  years 
of  disappointment  and  abstinence.  North,  like  much 
greater  men  before  and  after  him,  experienced  the  in- 
convenience of  having  sprung  a  policy  on  his  followers 
and  on  not  a  few  of  his  colleagues.  The  mutiny  began 
at  headquarters.  Welbore  Ellis,  a  placeman  who  had 
already  turned  his  hundredth  quarter-day,  querulously 
announced  that  as  a  man  of  honour  he  felt  bound  to 
oppose  the  Minister;  and  though  North  could  hardly 
be  called  a  sick  lion,  the  House  hailed  with  glee  an 
occurrence  which  bore  a  strong  resemblance  to  a  very 
familiar  fable.  Rigby  was  seen  taking  notes,  and  could 
with  difficulty  be  persuaded  to  put  them  back  into  his 
pocket ;  but  he  did  not  fail  to  make  his  views  known 
to  that  part  of  the  audience  which  was  the  least  likely 
to  be  gratified  by  them.  An  aside  from  him  was  more 
formidable  than  an  oration  from  Welbore  Ellis  ;  and 
every  Right  Honourable  Gentleman  within  earshot  on 
the  Treasury  bench  was  obliged  to  hear  how,  in  Rigby's 
opinion,  the  proper  persons  to  move  and  second  Lord 
North's  Resolution  were  Mr.  Otis  and  Mr.  Hancock,  of 
whom  the  one  had  been  the  ringleader  in  the  agitation 
against  the  Stamp  Act,  and  the  other  had  superintended 
the  destruction  of  the  tea.  The  most  violent  in  the  fray 
was  Captain  Acland,  a  cousin  by  marriage  of  Charles 
Fox.      He  was  a   young  man  of  fierce  manners   and 


FOX   COMES   TO    THE  FRONT  26 1 

dauntless  courage,  who  now  was  always  to  the  front 
when  sharp  words  were  being  exchanged ;  especially 
where  there  was  a  prospect  that  on  the  next  morning 
recourse  would  be  had  to  yet  more  pointed  weapons. 
Acland  assailed  the  Government  in  a  style  which  aroused 
the  wonder  even  of  Chatham ;  whose  standard  of  the 
lengths  to  which  a  young  military  man  might  go  when 
denouncing  his  elders  in  the  House  of  Commons  had, 
in  the  days  when  he  himself  was  a  cornet  of  horse,  been 
notoriously  a  generous  one.1 

The  real  danger  to  the  Ministry  lay  in  the  sulkiness 
of  the  King's  Friends.  These  gentlemen,  by  an  unac- 
countable blunder,  had  been  left  without  their  orders. 
Having  to  decide  for  themselves  as  to  what  their  em- 
ployer expected  of  them,  they  naturally  enough  con- 
cluded that,  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  Rockingham  and 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  their  duty  to  the  King 
required  them  to  stab  his  Minister  in  the  back.  North 
had  been  up  five  or  six  times,  and  matters  were  looking 
very  black  for  the  Government,  when,  before  it  was  too 
late,  a  deft  and  able  ally  came  to  the  rescue.  Sir  Gil- 
bert Elliot  was  a  politician  of  account  in  his  own  gener- 
ation, and  had  ere  this  been  honoured  by  a  message 
from  the  King  to  the  effect  that  he  did  not  take  so  for- 
ward a  part  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  his  abilities 
warranted.  But  he  needed  no  one  to  tell  him  how  to 
make  the  most  of  his  remarkable  qualities ;  and  he 
reserved  himself  for  emergencies  when  a  King's  Friend 
who  could  speak  as  well  as  vote  was  of  more  value  than 
dozens  or  scores  of  silent  courtiers. 

Gilbert  Elliot's  political  fortunes  had  gained  much, 
but  his  posthumous  celebrity  has  suffered  not  a  little, 
from  the  unique  distinction  of  his  family ;  for  he  was 
the  midmost  of  five  eminent  men,  with  the  same  Chris- 

1  "  Lord  North  was,  in  the  beginning  of  the  day,  like  a  man  exploded, 
and  the  judgment  of  the  House,  during  about  two  hours,  was  that  his 
Lordship  was  going  to  be  in  a  considerable  minority;  Mr.  Ellis  and 
others,  young  Acland  in  particular,  having  declared  highly  and  roughly 
against  his  desertion  of  the  cause  of  cruelty. "  —  Chatham  to  his  wife, 
Feb.  21,  1775. 


262  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

tian  name  and  surname,  who  succeeded  each  other  as 
father  and  son.  The  world,  glad  to  have  anything  by 
which  to  identify  him,  has  remembered  him  as  the 
writer  of  a  pastoral  song  admired  by  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
It  began  with  the  line,  perhaps  better  known  than  the 
rest  of  the  poem, 

My  sheep  I  neglected,  I  broke  my  sheep-hook. 

The  author  of  the  ditty  now  proved  that  he  was  skilled 
in  the  use  of  that  rustic  implement.  Elliot  bluntly 
warned  the  official  flock  that  it  was  high  time  to  leave 
off  butting  at  each  other,  and  scampering  at  large  over 
the  country.  He  contrived  to  convey  something  into 
his  manner  which  suggested  to  the  King's  Friends  that 
they  were  on  the  wrong  scent ;  as  indeed  was  the  case, 
since  the  whole  business  had  been  arranged  beforehand 
between  the  Sovereign  and  the  Minister.  The  storm 
abated;  and  Fox,  who  saw  that  there  had  been  suffi- 
cient of  it  for  his  purposes,  moved  that  the  Chairman 
should  leave  the  Chair.  A  division  took  place,  and 
there  was  some  cross-voting;  for  on  both  sides  there 
were  as  usual  certain  of  those  ingenious  senators  who 
please  themselves  with  thinking  that  they  indicate  their 
opinion  on  the  main  issue  by  the  course  they  take 
on  a  technical  point  which  is  understood  by  no  one 
outside  Parliament,  and  by  fewer  within  it  than  is 
generally  believed.  And  so  the  business  ended,  with 
a  twofold  result.  Fox,  in  his  character  of  a  champion 
of  liberty,  had  shown  himself  not  less  prompt  a  warrior, 
and  a  much  more  judicious  strategist,  than  in  the  days 
when  he  figured  as  Lord  of  Misrule  in  all  the  sham 
tournaments  of  the  House  of  Commons.  And  North 
had  been  effectually  frightened,  for  some  long  time  to 
come,  out  of  any  inclination  to  try  his  hand  at  the 
conciliation  of  America. 

The  Prime  Minister  had  no  desire  for  a  repetition  of 
the  lesson  which  that  twentieth  of  February  had  taught 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  263 

him.  He  saw  very  plainly  what  his  place  would  have 
been  worth  at  noon  on  the  twenty-first  if  the  King's 
Friends  had  been  correct  in  thinking  that  they  had  the 
King  behind  them.  So  long  as  North  held  his  present 
employment  there  was  no  demand  for  the  services  of 
his  better  self ;  and  he  returned  once  more  to  plod  the 
weary  round  of  coercive  legislation.  The  main  occu- 
pation of  Parliament  during  that  session  was  a  bill 
for  excluding  the  New  England  colonies  from  the  prin- 
cipal fishing  grounds  within  their  reach,  and  notably 
from  the  banks  of  Newfoundland.  It  was  from  the 
cod  fishery  that  the  prosperity  of  those  colonies  had 
originally  sprung,  and  by  the  same  industry  it  was  still 
largely  maintained.  A  sea  captain  in  the  early  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century  calculated  that  the  charge 
of  equipping  a  ship  of  a  hundred  tons,  with  eight 
boats  of  the  sort  now  called  dories  on  board,  was  four 
hundred  pounds.  "  Eight  boats  with  22  men  in  a 
Summer  doe  usually  kill  25,000  fish  for  every  Boat. 
Sometimes  they  have  taken  above  35,000  for  a  Boat,  so 
that  they  load  not  onely  their  owne  Ship,  but  other 
spare  ships  which  come  thither  onely  to  buy  the 
overplus."  This  captain  went  on  to  explain  that 
the  cargo,  if  taken  in  the  right  season  to  the  right 
market,  (which  was  not  "Touloune  or  Merselus,"  but 
England,)  would  sell  for  2,250/.  "  At  New  Plimoth,  in 
Aprill,"  the  writer  proceeded,  "there  is  a  fish  much 
like  a  herring  that  comes  up  into  the  small  brookes 
to  spawne.  After  those  the  Cod  also  presseth  in  such 
plenty,  even  into  the  very  harbours,  that  they  have 
caught  some  in  their  arms,  and  hooke  them  so  fast  that 
three  men  oft  loadeth  a  Boat  of  two  tuns  in  two 
houres." 1 

James  the  First  had  conferred  upon  the  settlers  in 
New  England  the  exclusive  privilege  of  fishing  in  North 

1  The  account  may  be  found  in  "  The  Generall  Historie  of  Virginia, 
New  England,  and  the  Swnmer  Isles,  by  Captaine  John  Smith,  London, 
1624"  ;  under  the  head  of  "Master  Dee,  his  opinion  for  the  building  of 
Ships." 


264  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

American  waters.  That  concession  was  justly  resented 
by  the  English  Parliament;  but  the  colonists  forbore 
from  enforcing  their  uttermost  rights,  and  indeed  had 
no  occasion  for  them.  They  lived  and  throve  by  fishing 
not  because  they  were  monopolists,  but  because  they 
were  on  the  spot ;  because  the  best  boat-builders  in  the 
world,  and  very  far  from  the  worst  ship-builders,  had 
their  yards  at  Boston ;  and  because  above  all  they 
belonged  to  the  right  race  for  the  work.  And  now, 
when  it  was  proposed  for  political  objects  to  drive 
them  from  the  pursuit  of  their  calling,  the  uneasiness 
which  had  begun  to  pervade  the  commercial  world 
deepened  into  consternation.  It  was  vain  for  the 
Ministry  to  hold  forth  the  bait  of  the  spoils  of  New 
England,  and  to  evoke  patriotic  cupidity  by  the  pros- 
pect of  the  three  hundred  thousand  pounds,  or  the  five 
hundred  thousand  pounds,  which  would  be  transferred 
yearly  from  the  ship-owners  of  Salem  and  Providence 
to  the  ship-owners  of  Poole  and  Dartmouth.  The 
trained  leaders  of  commerce,  who  knew  the  open 
secrets  of  solid  and  profitable  business,  did  not  look 
for  information  from  hack-writers  whose  statistics  and 
arguments  were  dictated  to  them  in  Downing  Street. 
The  whole  life  of  every  English  merchant  and  banker, 
and  of  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him,  had  been 
one  continuous  course  of  instruction  in  the  present  and 
progressing  value  of  the  trade  with  America.  The  ex- 
ports to  Pennsylvania  alone  had  increased  fifty-fold  in 
less  than  three-quarters  of  a  century.  New  England 
was  a  large  and  regular  customer,  with  an  enormous 
current  debt  owing  to  British  exporters  and  manu- 
facturers. That  custom  would  be  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  those  debts  could  never  be  recovered,  if  with  the 
loss  of  her  fishing  she  lost  the  means  of  providing  her- 
self with  imported  goods,  and  paying  for  those  which 
she  had  received  already.  Nor  was  it  only  a  question 
of  New  England.  The  colonies,  one  and  all,  were  on 
konour  to  stand  and  fall  together ;  and,  when  the  cruel 
and  insulting  measure  now  before  Parliament  was  once 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  265 

in  the  Statute-book,  all  hope  that  Congress  would  drop 
the  non-importation  agreement  would  have  to  be  defi- 
nitely abandoned. 

This  time  there  was  little  hesitation  in  the  action  of 
the  mercantile  classes  throughout  the  English-speaking 
world;  and  there  could  be  no  mistake  as  to  their  views, 
which  found  a  voice  in  petitions,  in  deputations,  and  in 
evidence  proffered  at  the  bar  of  the  Lords.  The  planters 
of  the  Sugar  Islands  resident  in  London  entreated  the 
House  of  Commons  to  stay  its  hand.  As  time  went  on 
and  the  news  of  what  was  purposed  reached  the  tropics, 
the  Assembly  of  Jamaica,  in  the  hurry  of  a  well- 
grounded  panic,  drew  up  and  despatched  a  petition 
explaining  how  in  their  case,  with  a  vast  slave  popula- 
tion around  and  among  them,  the  very  existence  of 
society  would  be  endangered  by  the  cessation  of  their 
traffic  with  the  American  colonies.  The  Society  of 
Friends  represented  to  Parliament  the  case  of  Nan- 
tucket, an  island  which  lay  off  the  coast  of  Massachu- 
setts. The  population  subsisted  on  the  whale  fishery, 
and  owned  a  fleet  of  one  hundred  and  forty  sail.  The 
agricultural  produce  of  Nantucket  would  hardly  support 
twenty  families  ;  but  the  island  contained  more  than 
five  thousand  inhabitants.  Nine  out  of  ten  among  them 
were  Quakers,  of  whom  none  were  disaffected  politi- 
cians, and  all  drank  tea  to  a  man.  That  was  a  sample 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  bill  would  involve  opponents, 
well-wishers,  and  neutrals  in  one  common  destruction. 
The  sentiments  of  the  higher  commerce,  in  its  central 
haunt,  found  expression  in  an  address  laid  by  the  Lord 
Mayor,  the  Aldermen,  and  the  Liverymen  at  the  foot  of 
the  Throne.  The  occupant  of  that  august  seat  received 
their  remonstrance  in  public  with  marked  coldness,  and 
characterised  it  in  private  as  a  new  dish  of  insolence 
from  the  shop  which  had  fabricated  so  many.  It  was  a 
shop  the  proprietors  of  which  could  not  fairly  be  charged 
with  interfering  in  matters  outside  their  own  province; 
for  the  debts  due  from  New  England  amounted  to  eight 
hundred  thousand  pounds  in  the  City  of  London  alone. 


266  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  bill  for  restraining  the  trade  and  commerce  of 
the  New  England  colonies  afforded  Parliament  one 
more  opening  to  arrange  by  policy  those  difficulties 
which  were  rapidly  tending  towards  a  solution  by  the 
arbitrament  of  war.  That  last  opportunity  was  soon  a 
lost  one ;  but  the  spokesmen  of  the  minority  comported 
themselves  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  supreme  occa- 
sion, and  of  the  great  assembly  to  which  they  belonged. 
It  was  a  question  precisely  suited  to  the  genius  of 
Burke.  The  final  series  of  appeals  in  which  he  ex- 
horted the  House  of  Commons  to  settle  the  American 
controversy  by  light  and  right,  before  it  came  to  a  con- 
test of  might,  showed  more  than  his  usual  power  of 
mastering  the  details  of  trade  and  finance,  and  con- 
verting them  into  oratory  for  the  instruction  of  his 
audience,  and  into  literature  for  the  admiration  of 
posterity.  As  member  for  Bristol  he  was  bound  to  do 
his  utmost  in  the  interests  of  commerce ;  and  his  con- 
stituents, the  best  of  whom  were  not  undeserving  of 
such  a  representative,  had  supplied  him  with  fresh 
stores  of  facts  and  calculations  in  addition  to  those 
which  he  possessed  already.  His  speaking  had  never 
been  more  rich  in  the  fruit,  and  more  sparing  in  the 
flowers  ;  and  he  had  his  reward  in  the  close  and  respect- 
ful attention  of  hearers  uneasily  conscious  that  the  fate 
of  the  empire  was  slipping  out  of  their  grasp,  and  that 
an  impulse  had  been  given  to  it  which  might  carry  it 
far  in  the  wrong  direction. 

Burke's  exertions  were  supported  and  supplemented 
by  Fox  with  an  abundance,  but  no  superfluity,  of  that 
straightforward  and  unlaboured  declamation  which, 
from  his  earliest  to  his  latest  speech,  always  commanded 
the  ear,  and  never  offended  the  taste,  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  With  headlong  but  sure-handed  energy  of 
delineation  he  sketched  out  the  broad  lines  of  states- 
manship, and  filled  them  in  with  the  special  circum- 
stances of  the  situation.  His  warning  against  the  folly 
of  presenting  all  Americans,  whatever  might  be  their 
political  sympathies,  with  the  alternative  of  starvation 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  267 

or  rebellion,  impressed  his  listeners  by  its  force  and 
directness,  and  received  striking  confirmation  at  the 
critical  moments  of  the  war.  On  three  several  occasions 
the  fate  of  a  campaign  was  largely  influenced  by  those 
very  fishermen  who  had  been  driven  wholesale  from 
their  employment  into  the  ranks  of  Washington's  army. 
The  enthusiasm,  the  intrepidity,  and  the  professional 
skill  of  the  mariners  who  served  in  the  New  England 
regiments  enabled  their  general  to  deprive  the  British 
garrison  of  the  supplies  which  abounded  on  the  islands 
in  Boston  harbour;  to  accomplish  the  retirement  from 
the  lines  of  Brooklyn  which  averted  what  otherwise 
must  have  been  a  crowning  disaster;  and  to  effect  that 
crossing  of  the  Delaware  on  a  mid-winter  midnight 
which  secured  for  him  the  most  sorely  wanted  of  all 
his  successes.  The  loyalist  poets  amused  themselves  by 
describing  how 

Priests,  tailors,  and  cobblers  fill  with  heroes  the  camp, 
And  sailors,  like  craw-fish,  crawl  out  of  each  swamp. 

But,  as  a  matter  of  history,  those  sailors  had  walked 
ashore  in  a  very  dangerous  temper  from  the  fishing 
vessels  which,  in  consequence  of  the  action  of  Parlia- 
ment, were  lying  useless  alongside  the  quays  of  every 
town  and  village  on  the  seaboard  of  New  England.1 

Fox's  argument,  roughly  and  insufficiently  reported, 
has  not  come  down  to  us  in  the  shape  for  insertion  in  a 
handbook  of  oratorical  extracts.  But  it  has  the  stamp 
of  a  speech  hot  from  the  heart,  spoken  by  a  man  who 
thought  only  of  convincing  or  confuting  those  who 
heard  him,  without  caring  how  his  words  would  read 
on  the  next  morning  or  in  another  century.  "You  have 
now,"  said  Fox,  "  completed  the  system  of  your  folly. 
You  had  some  friends  yet  left  in  New  England.  You 
yourselves  made  a  parade  of  the  number  you  had  there. 
But  you  have  not  treated  them  like  friends.  How  must 
they  feel,  what  must  they  think,  when  the  people  against 

1  The  verse  is  quoted  in  Tyler's  Literary  History. 


268  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

whom  they  have  stood  out  in  support  of  your  measures 
say  to  them :  '  You  see  now  what  friends  in  England 
you  have  depended  upon.  They  separated  you  from 
your  real  friends,  while  they  hoped  to  ruin  us  by  it ;  but 
since  they  cannot  destroy  us  without  mixing  you  in  the 
common  carnage,  your  merits  to  them  will  not  now  save 
you.  You  are  to  be  starved  indiscriminately  with  us. 
You  are  treated  in  common  with  us  as  rebels,  whether 
you  rebel  or  not.  Your  loyalty  has  ruined  you.  Re- 
bellion alone,  if  resistance  is  rebellion,  can  save  you 
from  famine  and  ruin.'  When  these  things  are  said  to 
them,  what  can  they  answer  ?  " 

The  opposite  view  to  that  held  by  Fox  and  Burke 
did  not  suffer  for  want  of  being  boldly  stated.  A  recent 
addition  to  the  notabilities  of  Parliament  had  been  made 
in  the  person  of  Henry  Dundas,  now  Lord  Advocate 
for  Scotland,  who  very  soon  gave  indication  of  those 
qualities  which  were  to  win  for  him  his  considerable 
future  and  his  unenviable  fame.  He  entered  on  his 
career  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  the  advantage  of 
having  early  in  life  played  leading  parts  on  a  narrower 
stage.  He  had  been  Solicitor-General  in  the  Court  of 
Session  of  Edinburgh  at  four  and  twenty;  and  had 
learned  to  debate,  if  he  had  learned  nothing  else  there 
for  his  profit,  in  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland.  Tall  and  manly,  —  with  a  marked  national 
accent  of  which,  unlike  Wedderburn,  he  had  the  good 
sense  not  to  be  ashamed,  —  his  look  and  bearing  be- 
tokened indefatigable  powers  and  a  dominant  nature. 
His  face  showed  evident  marks  of  his  having  been  a 
hearty  fellow,  for  which  a  convivial  generation  liked 
him  none  the  less ;  especially  when  they  came  to  find 
that  his  speeches  had  other  things  about  them  which 
were  broad  besides  their  Scotch.1     Those  who  followed 

1  Omond's  Lord  Advocates  of  Scotland,  chapter  xiv.  Boswell,  who 
had  his  personal  jealousies,  and  his  own  political  ambitions  outside  the 
Scotch  Bar,  was  greatly  exercised  when  Dundas  began  to  play  a  part  in 
London.  He  called  the  new  Minister  "  a  coarse  dog."  The  specimen  of 
Dundas's  humour  referred  to  by  Mr.  Omond,  and  reported  in  the  20th 
volume  of  the  Parliamentary  History,  is  not  so  much  coarse  as  revolting. 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  269 

him  closely  might  hope  to  carry  away  what  passed  for  a 
good  story  after  dinner,  in  circles  which  were  not  fas- 
tidious. Dundas  now  took  upon  himself  to  defend  the 
ministerial  proposal  against  the  strictures  of  Charles 
Fox.  The  measure,  he  said,  was  not  sanguinary ;  and 
as  for  the  famine  which  was  so  pathetically  lamented, 
his  only  fear  was  that  the  Act  would  fail  to  produce  it. 
Though  prevented  from  fishing  in  the  sea,  the  New 
Englanders  had  fish  in  their  rivers;  and  though  their 
country  was  not  fit  to  grow  wheat,  they  had  a  grain  of 
their  own,  their  Indian  corn,  on  which  they  could  sub- 
sist full  as  well  as  they  deserved. 

Such  was  the  man  who,  when  he  was  twenty  years 
older,  and  neither  more  nor  less  unfeeling,  had  at  his 
absolute  disposal  the  liberties  of  Scotland,  and  the  lives 
and  fortunes  of  all  who  loved  those  liberties  too  ardently 
for  their  own  safety.  On  the  present  occasion  Dundas 
had  gone  further  in  his  self-revelation  than  was  pleasing 
to  a  House  of  Commons  not  yet  accustomed  to  him  and 
his  ways.  Lord  John  Cavendish,  speaking  amidst  general 
sympathy,  gravely  rebuked  the  Minister  who  had  uttered 
sentiments  which  would  have  been  shocking  even  in  the 
mouth  of  a  parliamentary  buffoon ;  and  Burke  followed 
up  the  attack  in  plain  vernacular  suited  to  the  charac- 
ter of  the  offence  which  he  was  chastising.  Nothing, 
he  said,  could  be  more  foolish,  more  cruel,  and  more 
insulting  than  to  hold  out  as  a  resource  to  the  starving 
fishermen  ship-builders  and  ship-carpenters  who  would 
be  ruined  by  the  Act  that,  after  the  plenty  of  the 
Ocean,  they  might  poke  in  the  brooks  and  rake  in  the 
puddles,  and  diet  on  what  Englishmen  considered  as 
husks  and  draff  for  hogs.  The  friends  of  the  Govern- 
ment who  had  been  too  apt,  as  Horace  Walpole  said, 
to  treat  the  Americans  in  the  spirit  of  a  mob  ducking 
a  pickpocket,  were  ashamed  at  seeing  their  own  worst 
features  distorted  in  that  brazen  mirror.  The  Lord 
Advocate  in  vain  attempted  to  extenuate,  to  explain, 
and,  if  possible,  to  excuse  his  conduct.  Even  the 
majority  had  had  enough  of  him ;  and  the  only  accept- 


27O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

able  sentence  of  his  second  speech  was  that  in  which 
he  announced  that  he  should  bow  to  the  disposition  of 
the  House,  and  say  no  more. 

It  was  time  that  an  example  should  be  made.  Sand- 
wich and  Rigby  were  the  two  Ministers  whose  words 
went  for  most,  because  it  was  notorious  that  they  ruled 
the  Government.  As  if  by  concert  between  themselves, 
they  now  adopted  a  tone  of  forced  and  studied  inso- 
lence with  reference  to  the  colonists.  One  would  think, 
Rigby  said  in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  the  Ameri- 
cans were  otters  and  ate  nothing  but  fish.  As  to  the 
notion,  of  which  so  much  had  been  heard,  that  they 
might  find  courage  in  despair,  it  was  an  idea  thrown 
out  to  frighten  women  and  children.  They  had  not 
amongst  them  the  military  prowess  of  a  militia  drum- 
mer. The  Earl  of  Sandwich  descanted  on  the  same 
theme  in  the  House  of  Lords.  What  did  it  signify,  he 
Hsked,  if  the  colonies  abounded  in  men,  so  long  as  they 
were  raw,  undisciplined,  and  cowardly  ?  For  his  own 
part  he  wished  that  they  would  put  into  the  field  not 
forty  thousand,  but  two  hundred  thousand,  so-called 
soldiers ;  as  the  greater  their  numbers,  the  easier  would 
be  the  conquest.  And  then  he  proceeded  to  tell  the 
peers  an  anecdote  which  he  professed  to  have  got  from 
Sir  Peter  Warren.  He  related  at  considerable  length, 
and  with  infinite  gusto,  how  at  the  siege  of  Louisburg  in 
1745  the  Americans  had  been  placed  in  the  front  of  the 
army ;  how  they  had  shown  much  elation  at  the  honour 
which  had  been  conferred  upon  them,  though  they 
boasted  that  it  was  no  more  than  their  due ;  how  they 
all  ran  away  when  the  first  shot  was  fired ;  how  Sir 
Peter  then  posted  them  in  the  rear,  and  told  them  that 
it  was  the  custom  of  generals  to  preserve  their  best 
troops  to  the  last,  especially  among  the  ancient  Romans, 
who  were  the  only  nation  that  ever  resembled  the 
Americans  in  courage  and  patriotism. 

The  story  was  a  lie,  on  the  face  of  it.  No  man  with 
a  grain  of  knowledge  about  military  affairs  would  have 
believed  it  for  a  moment ;  and  no  man  of  honour  would 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES 


271 


have  repeated  it  without  believing  it,  even  if  he  were 
not  a  responsible  Minister  addressing  Parliament.  By- 
putting  it  into  the  mouth  of  a  British  Admiral,  Sandwich 
insulted  not  only  the  Americans,  but  the  honest  and 
generous  service  over  which  he  unworthily  presided. 
The  speech  was  a  poor  compliment  to  the  gratitude, 
or  else  to  the  information,  of  the  peers;  for  it  was 
known  and  acknowledged  that  the  land  force  employed 
in  those  operations  which  resulted  in  the  first  capture 
of  Louisburg  had  been  levied  in  New  England,  and  had 
behaved  to  admiration.1  The  Lords  resented  the  lan- 
guage which  Sandwich  had  addressed  to  them.  The  Earl 
of  Suffolk,  Secretary  of  State  though  he  was,  took  his 
colleague  of  the  Admiralty  roundly  to  task ;  and  sixteen 
peers,  in  the  Protest  which  they  entered  on  the  Journals, 
recorded  their  opinion  that  the  topic  so  much  insisted 
upon  by  a  lord  high  in  office,  namely,  the  cowardice  of 
his  Majesty's  American  subjects,  had  no  weight  in  itself 
as  an  argument  for  the  bill,  and  was  not  at  all  agreeable 
to  the  dignity  of  sentiment  which  ought  to  characterise 
their  House. 

These  taunts,  directed  against  a  people  as  high- 
mettled  as  our  own,  and  more  acutely  alive  to  what  was 
said  and  thought  about  them,  exercised  on  the  martial 
spirit  of  the  colonists  the  same  effect  as  Wedde*rburn's 

1  Parkman  says  in  the  first  chapter  of  his  Montcalm  and  Wolfe :  "New 
England  had  borne  the  heaviest  brunt  of  the  preceding  wars.  Having  no 
trained  officers,  and  no  disciplined  soldiers,  and  being  too  poor  to  main- 
tain either,  she  borrowed  her  warriors  from  the  workshop  and  the  plough, 
and  officered  them  with  lawyers,  merchants,  mechanics,  and  farmers.  To 
compare  them  with  good  regular  troops  would  be  folly  ;  but  they  did,  on 
the  whole,  better  than  could  have  been  expected,  and  in  the  last  war 
achieved  the  brilliant  success  of  the  capture  of  Louisburg."  The  exploit, 
Parkman  goes  on  to  say,  was  owing  partly  to  good  luck,  and  partly  to 
native  hardihood. 

Captain  Mahan  writes :  "The  most  solid  success,  the  capture  of  Cape 
Breton  Island  in  1745,  was  achieved  by  the  colonial  forces  of  New  Eng- 
land, to  which  indeed  the  royal  navy  lent  valuable  aid,  for  to  troops  so 
situated  the  fleet  is  the  one  line  of  communication."  Lord  Stanhope,  in 
his  History,  attributes  the  taking  of  Louisburg  to  the  people  of  New  Eng- 
land. "  For  their  commander  they  chose  Mr.  Pepperel,  a  private  gentle- 
man, in  whom  courage  and  sagacity  supplied  the  place  of  military  skill." 


2/2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

speech  before  the  Privy  Council  had  produced  on  their 
political  sensibilities.  The  records  of  America  during 
the  next  two  years  indicate  on  every  page  how  many 
recruits  of  the  choicest  sort  were  impelled  into  her 
armies  by  the  determination  that  such  a  reproach  should 
not  be  justified.  Her  national  literature  throughout  the 
next  generation  proves  that  the  memory  rankled  long 
after  the  veterans  who  survived  the  war  had  gone  back 
to  the  stack-yard  and  the  counting-house.  Unfortu- 
nately no  one  intervened  in  the  debates  who,  with  the 
authority  of  personal  experience,  could  testify  to  the 
real  value  of  the  colonial  militiamen.  Those  great  sol- 
diers who  had  served  with  them  in  the  field  were  in 
retirement  or  in  the  grave.  Chatham,  who  owed  them 
so  large  a  debt,  was  prevented  by  ill  health  from  com- 
ing down  to  the  House  of  Lords  in  order  to  abash  their 
detractors.  From  his  sick-chamber  he  wistfully  and 
critically  watched  all  that  was  passing,  and  he  was  not 
left  without  his  consolations.  The  Marquis  of  Granby, 
before  he  came  of  age,  had  been  returned  as  member 
for  the  University  of  Cambridge  for  the  sake  of  the  hero 
whose  noble  portrait,  as  he  stands  by  his  charger,  lights 
up  the  Great  Combination  Room  of  Trinity  College  with 
life  and  colour.  The  son  was  resolved  that,  as  far  as 
he  could  speak  for  his  dead  father,  something  should  be 
heard  even  at  second  hand  from  one  who  had  learned 
to  be  a  judge  of  courage  amid  scenes  very  different  from 
those  with  which  the  Bedfords  were  familiar.  Break- 
ing silence  for  the  first  time,  he  followed  Rigby  with  a 
fine  vindication  of  the  colonists,  and  a  happily  expressed 
tribute  to  the  Minister  who  had  made  use  of  their  valour 
for  the  protection  and  enlargement  of  the  Empire.  His 
reward  was  a  letter  dictated  by  Chatham,  exquisite  in 
feeling,  and  containing  words  of  praise  which,  coming 
from  such  a  quarter,  would  do  more  than  volumes  of 
good  advice  to  turn  a  young  man  into  the  right  path.1 
It  may  be  observed  with  satisfaction  that  the  chorus 

1  Chatham  to  Granby,  April  7,  1775;  from  a  draft  in  Lady  Chatham's 
handwriting. 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES 


273 


of  calumny  was  swelled  by  no  one  with  soldierly  ' 
antecedents,  or  with  the  making  of  a  soldier  in  him. 
Captain  Acland,  who  was  much  too  ready  to  inform 
Parliament  that  he  cordially  disliked  the  people  of 
Massachusetts,  always  spoke  of  their  military  qualities 
with  decency  and  even  with  respect.  The  time  was  not 
far  distant  when  he  learned  the  whole  truth  about  the 
fighting  value  of  New  Englanders.  After  the  last  of  a 
succession  of  hot  engagements,  in  all  of  which  he  had 
shown  daring  and  skill,  he  was  picked  up  desperately 
wounded,  well  within  the  American  lines.  And,  while 
he  was  still  a  prisoner,  his  services  to  his  country  were 
cut  short  in  a  duel  with  a  brother  officer  who  had  sneered 
in  his  presence  at  the  military  character  of  those  colo- 
nists whom,  brave  as  he  was,  Acland  knew  to  be  no  less 
brave  than  himself. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

HOSTILITIES   BECOME    IMMINENT.       LEXINGTON 

Rigby  had  told  the  House  of  Commons  that,  if  the 
Acts  against  which  Congress  protested  were  repealed, 
the  seat  of  the  Empire  would  henceforward  be  at  Phila- 
delphia ;  and  he  recommended  gentlemen  ambitious  of 
a  career  to  transfer  themselves  to  that  capital,  and  enjoy 
the  honour  of  consorting  with  Dr.  Franklin.  For  the 
great  American  had  now  started  on  his  way  back  across 
the  ocean ;  though  it  was  no  fault  of  Rigby  that  he  was 
not  still  in  London,  and  in  very  uncomfortable  quarters. 
If  by  the  publication  of  Hutchinson's  letters  Franklin 
contributed  to  embroil  the  relations  between  England 
and  the  colonies,  he  had  abundantly  expiated  his  own 
error,  and  had  done  his  best  to  redeem  the  errors  of 
others.  His  existence  during  the  last  fourteen  months 
had  been  one  long  penance,  which  he  endured  manfully 
and  patiently  because  he  was  conscious  that  he,  and  he 
alone,  possessed  in  combination  the  knowledge,  position, 
character,  and  capacity  indispensable  to  any  one  who 
aspired  to  bring  the  last  faint  chance  of  peace  to  a  suc- 
cessful issue.  On  the  day  after  the  scene  in  the  Privy 
Council  Office  he  had  been  dismissed  from  his  Postmas- 
tership ;  and  of  his  own  accord  he  dispensed  himself 
from  all  diplomatic  ceremonies,  keeping  aloof  from 
levees,  and  abstaining  from  direct  and  ostensible  inter- 
course with  Cabinet  Ministers  the  most  powerful  among 
whom  made  no  secret  of  their  opinion  that  the  proper 
residence  for  him  was  the  inside  of  Newgate.  Mean- 
while his  wife,  to  whom  he  had  been  happily  married 
forty-four  years,  and  from  whom  he  had  been  parted 

274 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  275 

for  ten,  was  dying  at  home  in  Pennsylvania;  and  he 
never  saw  her  again.  But  at  no  time  in  his  life  was 
his  society  so  eagerly  courted  by  such  eminent  men,  for 
the  promotion  of  such  momentous  objects.  Chatham, 
(whom  Franklin  had  once  found  unapproachable,  but 
who,  as  is  the  case  with  strong  and  haughty  but  gener- 
ous natures,  had  grown  mild  and  mellow  with  years,) 
secured  him  as  a  guest  in  Kent,  called  on  him  at  his 
lodgings  in  a  street  off  the  Strand,  and  took  care  to  be 
seen  paying  him  marked  attention  in  public.  In  the 
House  of  Lords  the  old  statesman,  with  characteristic 
ignorance  of  the  non-essential,  took  Franklin  to  the 
space  before  the  throne,  which  is  reserved  for  Privy 
Councillors  and  the  eldest  sons  of  peers.  On  learning 
his  mistake  he  limped  back  to  the  outer  Bar,  and  com- 
mended his  friend  to  the  care  of  the  door-keepers  in 
accents  which  all  might  hear. 

Lord  Howe,  now  a  Rear  Admiral,  who  if  hostilities 
broke  out  was  sure  of  an  important  command,  honoured 
himself  by  an  endeavour  to  avert  a  war  which  could 
not  fail  to  bring  him  wealth,  however  small  might  be 
the  opportunity  for  acquiring  glory.  He  commissioned 
his  sister  to  challenge  Franklin  to  a  trial  of  skill  at 
chess,  and  contrived  to  be  within  call  on  an  evening 
when  the  invitation  had  been  accepted.1  Lord  Howe, 
in  the  phrase  of  the  day,  opened  himself  freely  to  his 
new  acquaintance  on  the  alarming  situation  of  affairs, 
and  put  him  into  communication  with  Lord  Hyde,  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster ;  and  Lord  Hyde, 
as  was  well  understood  all  round,  meant  Lord  Dart- 
mouth. The  Secretary  for  the  Colonies  would  have 
given  his  salary,  many  times  told,  to  prevent  bloodshed ; 
though  in  the  last  resort  he  could  not  induce  himself  to 
thwart,  or  even  to  contradict,  a  master  towards  whom  he 
entertained  a  true  attachment,  and  who  esteemed  him 
as  he  deserved.  For  George  the  Third  was  at  his  very 
best  when    exchanging  ideas  with   Dartmouth  for  any 

1  Franklin's  Account  of  Negotiations  in  London  for  effecting  a  Recon- 
ciliation between  Great  Britain  and  the  American  Colonies. 


276  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

other  purpose  than  that  of  harrying  him  into  harrying 
the  Americans.  "  If  the  first  of  duties,"  (so  the  mon- 
arch wrote  to  the  Minister  in  July,  1773,)  "that  to  God, 
is  not  known,  I  fear  no  other  can  be  expected;  and  as 
to  the  fashionable  word  '  honour,'  that  will  never  alone 
guide  a  man  farther  than  to  preserve  appearance.  I 
will  not  add  more ;  for  I  know  I  am  writing  to  a  true 
believer ;  one  who  shows  by  his  actions  that  he  is  not 
governed  by  the  greatest  of  tyrants,  Fashion."  Not 
long  afterwards  his  Majesty  asked  Dr.  Beattie  what  he 
thought  of  Lord  Dartmouth,  and  the  author  of  the 
Essay  on  Truth  responded  with  effusion  which  bordered 
on  the  fulsome.  The  King,  who  spoke  and  wrote  a 
style  greatly  preferable  to  that  of  some  among  his  sub- 
jects who  had  most  pleased  the  literary  taste  of  the 
hour,  smiled  and  said :  "  Doctor  Beattie,  you  are  per- 
fectly right.  I  think  precisely  the  same  of  him  myself. 
He  is  certainly  a  most  excellent  man." 

An  unofficial  negotiation  for  settling  the  difficulties 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies  was  set  on  foot 
forthwith.  The  details  were  conducted  by  Franklin  in 
concert  with  two  of  those  Englishmen  of  the  middle 
class  who,  if  a  chance  was  given  them,  were  able  and 
willing  to  employ  upon  the  business  of  the  nation  the 
same  diligence  and  sagacity  with  which  they  had  long 
managed  their  own.  Mr.  Barclay  was  a  well-known 
member  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  as  likewise  was  his 
colleague,  Dr.  Fothergill ;  a  physician  with  a  great 
London  practice,  and  a  Natural  Historian  of  remarka- 
ble distinction.  Their  deliberations  took  shape  in  a 
document  called  by  the  modest  name  of  a  "  Paper  of 
Hints  for  Conversation."  In  truth  it  was  the  draft  of 
a  treaty  which,  if  it  had  been  approved,  signed,  and 
ratified,  would  have  had  a  merit  rare  among  the  cele- 
brated instruments  in  history; — that  of  terminating  a 
sharp  and  extended  controversy  rationally,  equitably,  per- 
manently, and  without  derogation  to  the  self-esteem  of 
either  of  the  contracting  parties.  A  copy  of  the  pro- 
posed Articles  had  been  in  Dartmouth's  hands,  and  he 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  2*]*] 

expressed  himself  about  them  hopefully  and  favourably 
in  private.  On  the  first  of  February,  1775,  Chatham 
presented  to  Parliament  a  bill  for  settling  the  troubles 
in  America,  and  the  Secretary  for  the  Colonies  begged 
their  Lordships  not  to  kill  the  measure  by  an  immediate 
vote,  but  to  let  it  lie  on  the  table  until  it  had  received 
their  careful  and  respectful  consideration.  In  his  sin- 
cere desire  to  do  his  duty  according  to  the  light  of  his 
own  understanding,  Dartmouth  had  for  a  moment 
forgotten  the  terrors  of  the  Bedfords.  Sandwich,  who 
suspected  that  peace  was  in  the  crucible,  knew  only  too 
well  that  premature  publicity  may  be  as  discomforting 
to  those  who  are  planning  good  as  to  those  who  are 
plotting  evil.  He  chose  his  moment  with  a  sinister  ad- 
dress worthy  of  the  orator  who  turned  the  debate  in  the 
Second  Book  of  "Paradise  Lost."  Looking  full  and 
hard  at  Franklin,  who  was  leaning  over  the  Bar,  Sand- 
wich exclaimed  that  he  had  in  his  eye  the  person  who 
drew  up  the  proposals  which  were  under  discussion,  — 
one  of  the  bitterest  and  most  mischievous  enemies  whom 
England  had  ever  known.  Chatham  hastened  to  inter- 
pose the  shield  of  his  eloquence  for  the  protection  of 
one  who  might  not  speak  for  himself  within  those  walls; 
but  Franklin  was  not  the  quarry  at  whom  Sandwich 
aimed.  The  shaft  had  gone  home  to  the  breast  towards 
which  it  was  really  levelled.  Dartmouth  rose  once 
more,  and  said  that  he  could  not  press  a  course  which 
evidently  was  unacceptable  to  their  Lordships,  and  that 
he  himself  would  give  his  voice  for  rejecting  the  bill 
forthwith. 

The  scheme  of  reconciliation,  which  promised  so 
fairly,  had  received  its  death-blow.  Franklin,  who  was 
determined  to  leave  no  device  untried,  offered  to  pay  the 
East  India  Company  for  their  tea  on  the  security  of  his 
private  fortune,  and  (he  might  have  added)  at  the  risk 
of  his  popularity  among  his  own  countrymen.  Mr.  Bar- 
clay on  the  other  hand,  in  his  honest  eagerness  to  save 
the  irretrievable,  hinted  that,  if  the  representative  of 
America  would  show  himself  sufficiently  easy  to  deal 


278  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

with,  he  might  expect  not  only  to  be  reinstated  in  the 
Postmastership  which  he  had  lost,  but  to  get  any  place 
under  Government  that  he  cared  to  ask  for.  Franklin, 
more  offended  than  he  chose  to  show,  replied  that  the 
only  place  the  Ministry  would  willingly  give  him  was  a 
place  in  a  cart  to  Tyburn,  but  that  he  would  do  his 
utmost  without  any  other  inducement  than  the  wish  to 
be  serviceable.  The  proceedings  of  the  conference 
trickled  on  for  a  few  weeks,  and  then  ended  in  a  marsh ; 
as  must  always  be  the  case  where  the  agents  on  either 
of  the  two  sides  are  not  their  own  masters,  but  have 
those  behind  them  who  intend  the  negotiations  to  fail. 
By  the  middle  of  March  Dr.  Fothergill  sadly  admitted 
that  the  pretence  of  an  accommodation  was  specious, 
but  altogether  hollow;  and  that  the  great  folks  whom 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  attending  as  patients  had  all 
along  regarded  the  colonies  as  nothing  better  than  "  a 
larger  field  on  which  to  fatten  a  herd  of  worthless  para- 
sites." Some  days  afterwards  Franklin  sailed  for  Phil- 
adelphia, and  beguiled  a  protracted  voyage  by  drawing 
up  an  account  of  the  doleful  transactions  on  which  he 
had  been  recently  engaged,  and  by  the  more  profitable 
and  congenial  occupation  of  testing  with  his  thermome- 
ter the  breadth  and  the  direction  of  the  Gulf  Stream. 

After  a  short  interval  he  was  followed  across  the 
Atlantic  by  emissaries  the  colour  of  whose  coats  showed 
that  the  day  of  grace  was  past.  The  affairs  of  America 
were  in  a  tangle  which  the  King  and  his  Ministers  had 
neither  the  will  nor  the  wit  to  unravel.  The  knot  was 
now  for  the  sword  to  cut,  and  they  looked  around  them 
for  a  man  who  had  the  skill  of  his  weapon.  Clive,  and 
his  old  chief  Lawrence,  had  died  within  the  last  few 
months.  Granby  had  fought  in  the  best  British  fashion 
at  the  head  of  a  British  contingent  as  large  as  a  formi- 
dable army;  and  Wolfe  had  done  miracles  with  smaller 
numbers.  But  they  both  had  gone,  leaving  nothing 
except  their  example.  Albemarle  too  was  dead,  who  as 
general  of  the  land  forces  in  the  West  Indies  had 
shared  with  the  navy  in  the  undoubted  honour  and  the 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  279 

vast  profit  which  accrued  from  the  conquest  of  Ha- 
vanna.  As  an  officer  who  had  been  tried  in  a  supreme 
command  there  remained  Sir  Jeffrey  Amherst.  He 
had  won  his  laurels  in  America,  where  he  had  gained 
the  character  of  a  cautious  and  sound  strategist.  His 
name  stood  high  among  the  colonists,  who  had  formed 
half  of  the  very  considerable  body  of  troops  which  he 
was  careful  to  gather  around  him  before  he  opened  a 
campaign;  whom  he  had  treated  handsomely;  and  to 
whose  co-operation  he  gratefully  attributed  an  ample 
portion  of  the  credit  of  his  victory. 

The  judgment  of  New  Englanders  on  their  rulers, 
when  newspapers  were  few  and  cautious,  was  to  be 
found  in  their  sermons,  which  never  flattered  those 
whom  the  preacher  and  his  hearers  did  not  love.  When 
Montreal  fell  in  the  autumn  of  1760,  the  pulpits  rang 
with  the  praises  of  "the  intrepid,  the  serene,  the  suc- 
cessful Amherst."  The  pastor  of  Brookfield,  who  had 
been  a  chaplain  in  a  Massachusetts  regiment,  (and 
American  military  chaplains  generally  contrived  to  smell 
whatever  powder  was  being  burned,)  after  hailing  the 
downfall  of  the  Canadian  Babylon,  broke  out  into  praises 
of  Amherst  the  renowned  general,  worthy  of  that  most 
honourable  of  all  titles,  the  Christian  hero ;  who  loved 
his  enemies,  and  while  he  subdued  them,  made  them 
happy.  Amherst  had  indeed  endeavoured  to  infuse 
some  chivalry  and  humanity  into  the  rude  and  often 
horrible  warfare  of  the  backwoods  ;  and  his  severities, 
sharp  enough  on  occasion,  were  necessitated  by  the 
hideous  cruelties  which  the  Indian  allies  of  France  in- 
flicted upon  the  farming  population  of  the  English 
border. 

Amherst  had  proved  himself  a  stout  warrior  else- 
where than  in  the  field.  In  the  year  1768  he  had  been 
in  collision  with  the  King  over  a  matter  about  which 
neither  was  in  the  right ;  and  the  General  had  come  off 
with  flying  colours  and  abundance  of  spoil.  A  Court 
favourite  had  been  nominated  to  a  post  which  Amherst 
held,  but  the  work  of  which  he  did  not  do.     In   his 


280  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

wrath  he  threw  up  all  his  functions  and  appointments, 
and  aroused  such  a  commotion  in  the  political  and  mili- 
tary world  that  he  had  to  be  coaxed  back  at  any  sacri- 
fice. He  returned  to  the  official  ranks  stronger,  and 
better  endowed  with  public  money,  than  ever ;  and 
neither  minister  nor  monarch  ventured  to  disturb  him 
again.  By  January  1775  George  the  Third  had  recon- 
sidered the  favourable  opinion  which  he  had  formed  of 
General  Gage,  and  now  declared  him  wanting  in  activity 
and  decision.  He  proposed  to  confer  upon  Amherst 
the  command  of  the  troops  in  America,  together  with 
a  commission  to  use  his  well-known  influence  and  popu- 
larity among  the  colonists  for  the  purpose  of  inducing 
them  to  make  their  peace  before  recourse  was  had  to 
arms.  Gage  meanwhile,  by  an  arrangement  in  which 
the  tax-payer  was  the  last  person  thought  of,  was  to 
continue  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  and  to  draw  his 
pay  as  Commander-in-Chief.  George  the  Third  under- 
took in  person  the  task  of  appealing  to  Amherst's 
loyalty,  which  he  endeavoured  further  to  stimulate  by 
the  offer  of  a  peerage.  In  the  disagreeable  and  disas- 
trous war  which  was  now  at  hand,  titles  were  of  use 
rather  for  the  purpose  of  tempting  men  into  active  ser- 
vice, than  of  rewarding  them  when  they  returned  from 
it.  The  veteran  stated  very  plainly  that  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  serve  against  the  Americans,  "  to  whom 
he  had  been  so  much  obliged."  The  King,  with  sincere 
regret,  informed  Dartmouth  that  Amherst  could  not  be 
persuaded.  It  only  remained,  he  said,  to  do  the  next 
best ;  to  leave  the  command  with  Gage,  and  send  to  his 
assistance  the  ablest  generals  that  could  be  thought  of. 
The  choice  of  those  generals  was  not  an  act  of 
favouritism.  George  the  Third,  as  long  as  he  continued 
to  transact  public  business,  looked  closely  into  all  high 
military  appointments  which  involved  grave  military  re- 
sponsibilities. His  judgment  was  excellent  save  when 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Duke  of  York  it  was  misled  by 
considerations  of  family  interest  and  of  strong  affec- 
tion.    Determined  to  have  his  armies  well  commanded, 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  28 1 

he  set  aside  his  personal  inclinations  and  overcame  his 
political  prejudices.  In  time  of  peace  and  war  alike, 
even  when  he  was  told  that  the  salvation  of  the  country- 
depended  on  it,  no  importunity  from  a  Cabinet  which 
required  strengthening  could  prevail  on  him  to  employ 
a  statesman  whom  he  regarded  as  an  opponent.  And 
between  one  war  and  another  he  was  far  from  overlook- 
ing political  considerations  in  his  treatment  of  the  army 
and  the  navy.  Whenever  a  veteran,  scarred  with  wounds 
and  honoured  throughout  the  whole  service,  ventured  to 
give  a  vote  displeasing  to  the  King,  he  was  harshly  re- 
ceived at  Court  and  ruthlessly  deprived  of  the  rewards 
which  his  valour  had  earned.  But  when  hostilities 
broke  out,  if  a  famous  soldier  or  sailor  who  had  been 
wronged  and  slighted  had  any  fight  left  in  him,  George 
the  Third  did  not  fail  to  display  what  moralists  class 
as  the  rarest  form  of  magnanimity, — that  of  overlook- 
ing the  injuries  which  he  himself  had  inflicted. 

Ingratitude  during  peace,  alternating  with  a  tardy 
recognition  of  merit  under  the  pressure  of  war,  up  to 
the  very  last  marked  George  the  Third's  dealings  with 
great  soldiers  whose  politics  displeased  him.  Sir  John 
Moore  complained  that  he  was  treated  as  a  "bad  sub- 
ject "  by  the  King,  for  whom  he  had  been  wounded  five 
times,  and  the  discipline  and  efficiency  of  whose  army 
he  had  done  more  than  any  living  man  to  restore.  At 
length,  when  he  was  wanted  for  the  chief  command  in 
Spain,  George  the  Third  "very  graciously,"  and  it  must 
be  owned  very  frankly,  said  that  a  stop  must  be  put  to 
persecution,  and  that  Sir  John  Moore  "must  not  be 
plagued  any  more."  Lord  Lynedoch  had  been  noth- 
ing but  a  Whig  country  gentleman  till  he  was  five  and 
forty ;  and  a  Whig  country  gentleman  he  remained  until 
he  died  at  ninety-five  with  a  military  reputation  sec- 
ond only  to  that  of  Wellington.  He  was  even  worse 
used  than  his  friend  and  patron  Sir  John  Moore ;  for 
the  King  angrily  refused  to  give  him  army-rank.  His 
Majesty  quarrelled  even  with  Lord  Melville  when  that 
statesman  protested  against  the  treatment  to  which  so 


282  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

distinguished  an  officer  was  exposed,  and  was  quite  pre- 
pared to  quarrel  over  the  same  matter  with  Pitt.  After 
Corunna,  when  such  a  sword  as  Graham's  could  not  be 
suffered  to  remain  idle,  he  at  length  received  his  due, 
and  was  sent  as  Wellington's  right-hand  man  to  the 
Peninsula,  where  he  won  Barossa  and  helped  to  win 
Vittoria.1 

Chief  among  the  three  Major-Generals  selected  to 
serve  in  America  in  the  spring  of  1775  was  William 
Howe,  brother  of  the  Admiral  and  of  the  Lord  Howe 
who  fell  at  Ticonderoga  in  the  year  1758.  That  noble- 
man, who  was  an  Irish  viscount,  had  been  member  for 
Nottingham.  When  the  news  of  his  death  reached 
England,  his  mother  in  pathetic  terms  urged  the  people 
of  the  city  which  her  son  had  represented  to  replace 
him  by  his  younger  brother,  who  himself  was  then  at 
the  front  with  his  regiment.  So  William  Howe  was 
nominated  and  chosen,  and  had  sat  for  Nottingham 
ever  since.  At  the  general  election  of  1774  he  told  his 
constituents  that  the  whole  British  army  together  would 
not  be  numerous  enough  to  conquer  America,  and  as- 
sured them  that,  if  he  were  offered  a  command  against 
the  colonists,  he  would  not  scruple  to  refuse  it.  The 
King,  who  knew  him  as  a  splendid  officer,  the  discipline 
of  whose  battalion  had  been  a  model,  and  whose  gal- 
lantry was  a  proverb,  was  himself  courageous  enough 
to  take  the  risk  of  a  rebuff.  When  invited  to  sail  for 
America,  Howe  inquired  whether  he  was  to  consider 
the  message  as  a  request  or  an  order ;  and  on  being  in- 
formed that  it  was  an  order  he  obeyed  it.  He  came 
back  before  the  end  of  the  Parliament,  with  a  reputa- 
tion for  every  military  quality,  except  that  of  coolness 
under  fire,  sadly  impaired,  —  to  find  at  the  next  election 
that  the  freemen  of  Nottingham  had  good  memories, 
and  a  different  view  of  his  personal  obligations  from 
that  which  he  himself  had  held. 

The  next  of  the  three  was  John  Burgoyne.     He  had 

1  Delavoye's  Life  of  Lord  Lyne dock,  pp.  269,  262,  249,  250. 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  283 

gone  through  the  usual  experiences  of  a  distinguished 
military  man  who  was  likewise  a  politician.  He  had 
been  thanked  in  his  seat  in  Parliament ;  he  had  received 
the  governorship  of  a  fortress  in  marked  and  special 
recognition  of  his  brilliant  valour ;  and  he  had  been  the 
subject  of  a  letter  in  which  the  King  told  the  Prime 
Minister  that,  if  Colonel  Burgoyne  had  not  been  pru- 
dent enough  to  vote  for  the  Royal  Marriage  Bill,  his 
Majesty  would  certainly  have  taken  that  governorship 
away.  Burgoyne's  sentiments  towards  the  colonists 
were  friendly,  but  his  view  of  the  legal  and  constitu- 
tional aspect  of  the  controversy  was  not  favourable  to 
their  claims.  He  agreed  to  serve  against  them  without 
compunction,  though  he  missed  that  sense  of  exhilara- 
tion which  he  had  hitherto  felt  whenever  he  had  gone 
to  meet  the  enemy.  He  confessed  his  lack  of  enthu- 
siasm to  his  Sovereign  in  a  letter  not  unbecoming  a 
soldier,  but  too  long  and  too  laboured,  like  all  which  Bur- 
goyne ever  wrote  even  under  circumstances  calculated 
to  prune  and  chasten  the  most  copious  and  flowery  style. 
The  third  Major-General  was  Henry  Clinton,  who  had 
learned  his  trade  under  Prince  Ferdinand  during  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  and  who  now  was  member  for 
Newark  and  a  supporter  of  the  Ministry.  The  dash 
and  dexterity  with  which  these  officers,  one  and  all, 
had  seized  their  opportunities,  in  America,  in  Portugal, 
or  in  Germany,  fully  justified  the  King  in  his  hope  that 
they  would  be  equal  to  larger  enterprises  ;  and  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  the  army  confirmed  his  choice.  The  con- 
nection between  war  and  politics,  in  the  aristocratic 
England  of  four  generations  ago,  was  not  less  close 
than  in  the  great  days  of  ancient  Rome.  Then  the 
scion  of  a  consular  family  courted  the  suffrages  of  the 
people  in  order  that  he  might  go  forth  to  command 
their  legions,  and  returned  to  the  senate  from  Spain, 
or  Gaul,  or  Pontus,  to  be  congratulated  if  he  had  tri- 
umphed, or  to  defend  himself  in  case  things  had  gone 
badly  with  him  in  the  field.  The  three  Major-Generals 
were  all  members  of  Parliament,  and  all  remained  mem- 


284  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

bers  while  year  after  year  they  were  campaigning  and 
administrating  thousands  of  miles  away  from  Westmin- 
ster. After  the  frightful  miscarriages  which  befell  them 
personally,  or  which  had  taken  place  under  their  auspices, 
they  all  resumed  their  seats  on  their  accustomed  bench 
in  the  House  of  Commons  as  naturally  and  quietly  as  if 
they  had  come  back  from  a  week  of  partridge  shooting. 
The  expedient  adopted  was  singularly  unfortunate. 
If  any  one  of  the  three  had  been  invested  with  the  com- 
mand in  chief,  he  would  for  the  sake  of  his  own  reputa- 
tion have  applied  to  the  War  Office  for  as  many  regiments 
as  could  be  spared  from  home  duties ;  and,  being  on  the 
spot,  he  would  have  made  his  representations  felt.  But 
no  Ministry  will  press  upon  an  absent  general  larger 
means  and  appliances  than  those  which  he  insists  on 
having.  Gage  was  the  author  of  the  pleasant  theory 
that  the  military  side  of  the  difficulty  would  prove  to  be 
a  very  small  matter.  He  now  had  begun  to  be  alarmed, 
and  wrote  in  vague  terms  about  the  necessity  of  being 
provided  with  "a  very  respectable  force."  But  during 
his  recent  visit  to  England,  speaking  as  a  soldier  who 
knew  the  colonies  and  who  was  responsible  for  keeping 
them,  he  had  set  going  a  notion  that  the  Americans  were 
unwarlike  as  a  community,  and  pusillanimous  as  individ- 
uals. That  agreeable  and  convenient  idea  had  been 
eagerly  caught  up  by  the  noisiest  members  of  the 
Government,  and  had  been  employed  by  them  in  public 
as  an  argument  against  those  who  condemned  their 
policy  as  hazardous.  They  had  assured  Parliament  that 
a  course  of  coercion  would  be  effective,  safe,  and  the 
very  reverse  of  costly  ;  and  this  they  had  done  on  Gage's 
authority.  He  had  named  a  limited  number  of  additional 
battalions  as  the  outside  which  he  would  require  in  order 
to  complete  the  business  ;  and  those  battalions  he  should 
have,  and  not  a  musket  more.  The  reinforcements  which 
accompanied  Howe  and  Burgoyne  across  the  sea  brought 
up  the  garrison  at  Boston  to  ten  thousand  men.  It  was 
an  army  powerful  enough  to  inspire  all  the  colonies  with 
alarm  for  their  independence,  and  so  burdensome  as  to 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  285 

irritate  Massachusetts  beyond  endurance.  But  it  was 
utterly  inadequate  to  the  task  of  holding  down  New 
England,  and  ludicrously  insufficient  for  the  enterprise 
of  conquering,  and  afterwards  controlling,  America. 
When  the  war  had  endured  a  twelvemonth  David 
Hume, — who  had  lived  through  a  very  great  period 
of  our  history,  and  had  written  almost  all  the  rest  of  it, 
—  pronounced  that  the  show  of  statesmen  in  power, 
and  generals  and  admirals  in  command,  had  up  to  that 
point  been  the  poorest  ever  known  in  the  annals  of  the 
country.  Of  those  generals  Gage  was  the  first,  and 
perhaps  the  worst ;  and  in  his  combined  quality  of  civil 
administrator,  military  leader,  and  above  all  of  adviser 
to  the  Government  in  London,  he  played,  for  a  very 
small  man,  a  material  and  prominent  part  in  the  prepa- 
ration of  an  immense  catastrophe. 

A  Governor  who  was  bound  by  statute  to  destroy  the 
liberties  of  his  province,  and  ruin  the  prosperity  of  its 
capital,  had  a  very  narrow  margin  within  which  he 
could  display  himself  as  a  beneficent  ruler.  But  there 
were  two  ways  of  discharging  even  such  a  commission. 
Obliged  to  punish,  Gage  should  have  avoided  the  ap- 
pearance of  enjoying  the  work  on  which  he  was  em- 
ployed unless  he  was  prepared  to  abandon  the  hope  of 
ultimately  playing  the  peacemaker;  and  that  function 
was  one  among  the  many  which  he  was  called  upon  to 
fulfil.  He  had  been  confidentially  instructed  by  the 
King  to  "  insinuate  to  New  York  and  such  other  colo- 
nies as  were  not  guided  by  the  madness  of  the  times/' 
proposals  which  might  entice  them  back  to  due  obedi- 
ence, without  putting  "the  dagger  to  their  throats."1 
The  General  had  already  tried  his  hand  at  pacification. 
In  October  1774  he  wrote  to  the  President  of  the 
Congress  at  Philadelphia  congratulating  him  on  his  en- 
deavours after  a  cordial  reconciliation  with  the  mother- 
country,  and  promising  his  own  services  as  a  mediator.2 

1  George  the  Third  to  Dartmouth:  Jan.  31,  1775. 

2  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.  Fourteenth  Report,  Appendix, 
PartX. 


286  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  might  have  spared  his  fine  phrases ;  for  he  was  the 
last  man  whose  arbitration  or  intervention  would  have 
been  accepted  by  any  New  Englander  endowed  with 
a  grain  of  local  patriotism.  By  making  public  reference 
to  a  hackneyed  and  offensive  taunt  he  had  done  that 
which  private  persons  seldom  forgive,  and  communities 
never.  To  be  called  a  saint  by  the  unsaint-like  is  a 
form  of  canonisation  which  nowhere  is  held  to  be  a 
compliment;  and  just  now  there  was  something  too 
much  of  it  in  Boston.  "The  inhabitants  of  this  col- 
ony," wrote  an  officer,  "  with  the  most  austere  show  of 
devotion  are  void  of  every  principle  of  religion  or  com- 
mon honesty,  and  reckoned  the  most  arrant  cheats  and 
hypocrites  in  America."  That  was  the  creed  of  the 
barracks;  and  Gage  paid  it  the  homage  of  a  joke  such 
as  a  parcel  of  subalterns  might  have  concocted  after 
mess,  and  been  ashamed  of  long  before  the  eldest  of 
them  had  got  his  company.  When  Massachusetts, 
threatened  in  her  liberties  and  her  commerce,  bowed 
her  head,  (though  not  in  fear,)  and  set  aside  a  day  for 
prayer  and  fasting,  he  inflicted  a  deliberate  and  official 
insult  on  the  people  whom  he  governed  by  issuing  a 
proclamation  against  Hypocrisy.  Having  thus  para- 
lysed for  ever  and  a  day  his  power  of  acting  as  an  in- 
tercessor between  the  Crown  and  the  colony,  he  informed 
the  Cabinet  that,  public  feeling  in  America  being  what 
it  was,  the  penal  Acts  could  not  be  enforced,  and  had 
much  better  be  suspended. 

Such  a  recommendation  from  the  very  man  whose 
sanguine  assurances  had  decoyed  the  Government  into 
what  he  himself  now  confessed  to  be  a  Slough  of 
Despond,  was  described  by  the  King  with  pardonable 
impatience  as  "  the  most  absurd  course  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  suggested."  But  whatever  might  be  the  quarter 
whence  it  emanated,  the  advice  came  on  the  top  of  tid- 
ings which  foretokened  that  a  river  of  blood  would  be 
set  flowing  unless  it  was  acted  upon  without  delay. 
The  cannon  and  stores  of  the  Massachusetts  Militia 
were  kept  at  and  near  Cambridge.     Gage  now  learned 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  287 

the  ominous  circumstance  that  the  several  townships  of 
the  province  had  begun  quietly  to  withdraw  their  share 
of  the  ammunition.  On  the  first  of  September  1774 
before  sunrise,  he  despatched  an  expedition  from  Boston, 
by  road  and  river,  which  took  possession  of  a  couple  of 
field  pieces  and  two  hundred  and  fifty  kegs  of  powder, 
and  lodged  them  securely  behind  the  ramparts  of  the 
Castle.  The  performance  was  smart,  and  the  most  was 
made  of  it,  not  so  much  by  the  vanity  of  the  author  as 
by  the  apprehensions  of  those  against  whom  it  had 
been  projected.  The  truth  was  spread  all  over  Middle- 
sex county  in  a  few  hours.  It  ran  through  the  New 
England  colonies  with  the  speed  and  the  growing  di- 
mensions of  a  rumour ;  and,  by  the  time  it  got  to  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  good  patriots  professed  to  know 
for  certain  that  a  British  man-of-war  had  fired  on  the 
people  and  had  killed  six  of  them  at  the  first  shot.  In 
some  such  shape  the  news  reached  London ;  and  all 
the  friends  and  all  the  foes  of  America  believed  that 
Gage  had  made  good  his  boasts  and  his  promises,  and 
that  the  colonists,  at  the  first  glint  of  a  bayonet,  had 
indeed  proved  themselves  such  as  Rigby  and  Sandwich 
had  represented  them. 

Charles  Fox  expressed  his  thoughts  to  Edmund 
Burke  in  a  letter  which  has  been  quoted  ere  now  in 
condemnation  of  them  both,  but  which  proves  nothing 
worse  than  that  the  patriotism  of  the  two  statesmen 
embraced  their  fellow-countrymen  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  "Though  your  opinions,"  Fox  wrote,  "have 
turned  out  to  be  but  too  true,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  far 
enough  from  triumphing  in  your  foresight.  What  a 
melancholy  consideration  for  all  thinking  men  that  no 
people,  animated  by  what  principle  soever,  can  make  a 
successful  resistance  to  military  discipline !  I  do  not 
know  that  I  was  ever  so  affected  with  any  public  event, 
either  in  history  or  life.  The  introduction  of  great 
standing  armies  into  Europe  has  then  made  all  mankind 
irrevocably  slaves!"  The  consideration  which  most 
depressed   him  was  "the   sad  figure  which  men  made 


288  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

against  soldiers."  Fox's  remarks,  however,  were  based 
on  a  curious  and  total  misapprehension  of  the  facts.  As 
fast  as  the  report  of  the  seizure  of  the  powder  travelled 
up  and  down  the  coast  and  among  the  inland  villages, 
the  neighbours  flocked  to  each  centre  of  resort,  and  re- 
mained together  throughout  the  night.  Next  morning 
many  thousand  people  converged  on  Cambridge.  They 
arrived  with  sticks  and  without  fire-arms ;  as  citizens, 
and  not  as  militia ;  under  the  command  of  a  Selectman 
of  their  township  or  a  member  of  their  Committee  of 
Correspondence.  The  General  had  taken  a  step  imply- 
ing war ;  and  they,  as  civilians,  had  come  for  the  grave 
purpose  of  doing  that  which  meant  revolution.  Oliver, 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  province,  who  resided  at 
Cambridge,  had  gone  into  Boston  for  the  purpose  of 
entreating  Gage  to  keep  his  troops  within  their  barracks. 
The  distance  to  and  fro  between  the  two  towns  was  only 
what  a  sophomore  of  Harvard  College  would  cover  for 
his  daily  exercise  between  lecture  and  chapel.  But 
Oliver  who  knew  his  countrymen  as  one  who  feared 
them,  and  Joseph  Warren  as  one  who  loved  and  led 
them,  were  agreed  in  their  opinion  that,  if  a  detachment 
marched,  it  would  never  find  its  way  back  to  Boston. 

It  was  Oliver  whom  the  people  sought,  and  they 
waited  with  full  knowledge  of  the  purpose  for  which 
they  wanted  him.  They  kept  their  hand  in  during  his 
absence  by  taking  pledges  of  renunciation  of  office  from 
a  High  Sheriff,  and  two  Mandamus  Councillors.  When 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  came  back  with  what  he  in- 
tended to  be  the  welcome  announcement  that  no  armed 
force  was  on  the  road  from  Boston,  they  requested  him 
formally  to  resign  his  post ;  and  after  some  gasconad- 
ing on  his  part,  which  they  endured  very  stolidly,  he 
acceded  to  their  desire.  Then,  standing  closely  packed 
beneath  the  rays  of  the  hottest  sun  which  had  shone 
during  that  summer,  they  began  like  true  Americans  to 
pass  Resolutions ;  acknowledging  that  Gage,  when  he 
removed  the  powder,  had  not  violated  the  constitution  ; 
and  voting  unanimously  their  abhorrence  of  mobs  and 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  289 

riots,  and  of  the  destruction  of  private  property.  The 
British  General  in  anxious  self-defence  wrote  to  the 
Ministry  at  home  that  they  were  no  town  rabble,  but 
the  freeholders  and  farmers  of  the  county.  Guided  by 
their  own  good  sense,  and  by  the  advisers  on  whom 
they  had  been  accustomed  to  rely  in  the  ordinary  trans- 
action of  civil  business,  they  exhibited  a  firmness  com- 
bined with  moderation  which  reassured  those  who,  with 
Charles  Fox,  expected  little  from  the  behaviour  of  men 
when  placed  in  opposition  to  soldiers.  Soldiers,  how- 
ever, within  a  few  days,  and  not  many  hours,  they 
might  have  had  in  abundance ;  for  the  contingents 
from  the  more  distant  regions,  where  the  alarm  was 
greater  and  the  exasperation  not  less,  came  armed  and 
in  martial  array.  Israel  Putnam,  his  deeper  feelings 
touched  to  the  quick  by  the  loss  of  the  material  for  so 
many  good  cartridges,  took  upon  himself  to  call  out  the 
militia  of  Connecticut,  and  sent  the  fiery  cross  far  and 
wide  over  the  continent.  Twenty  thousand  musketeers 
were  already  on  foot,  with  their  faces  towards  the  mouth 
of  the  Charles  River,  when  they  were  turned  back  by 
expresses  from  Boston  bearing  the  intelligence  that  for 
the  present  everything  was  well  over.  Putnam,  proud 
of  the  result,  if  only  half  pleased  at  the  ease  with  which 
it  had  been  attained,  replied  by  an  assurance  that,  but 
for  the  counter  orders,  double  the  force  would  have  been 
on  the  move  in  another  twenty-four  hours.  And  he  took 
the  opportunity  of  giving  the  people  of  Massachusetts 
an  admonition,  (the  more  mundane  part  of  which  he 
evidently  thought  that  they  needed,)  to  put  their  trust 
in  God  and  mind  to  keep  their  powder  safe.1 

The  Boston  patriots  were  never  again  caught  nap- 
ping; and  they  very  soon  commenced  a  system  of  re- 
prisals, or  rather  of  depredations  on  their  own  property, 
which  kept  both  the  garrison  and  the  squadron  awake. 
One  night,  within  hearing  of  the  nearest  man-of-war,  if 

1  "  We  much  desire  you  to  keep  a  strict  guard  over  the  remainder  of 
your  powder;   for  that  must  be  the  great  means,  under  God,  of  the  salva- 
tion of  our  country." 
u 


29O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

only  the  officer  of  the  watch  had  known  what  they  were 
about,  they  withdrew  the  cannon  from  a  battery  at 
Charlestown,  which  commanded  the  entrance  of  the 
inner  harbour.  Another  night  they  removed  four  pieces 
which  were  stored  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Com- 
mon. Their  audacity  and  ubiquity  were  so  bewildering 
that  Admiral  Graves,  who  now  was  conducting  the 
blockade,  could  think  of  no  better  expedient  than  that 
of  spiking  the  guns  which,  from  the  North  point  of  the 
city,  bore  upon  the  roadstead  where  his  ships  were  ly- 
ing. At  other  seaports,  to  which  the  royal  navy  was 
only  an  occasional  visitor,  the  inhabitants  were  still 
more  free  to  act;  and  in  laying  hands  on  what  belonged 
to  their  colony  they  felt  that  they  had  on  their  side  the 
moral  law,  or  at  any  rate  as  much  of  it  as  sufficed  for 
their  simple  needs.  At  Portsmouth  in  New  Hampshire 
the  Sons  of  Liberty  entered  the  fort  in  broad  daylight, 
to  the  sound  of  music.  Disregarding  the  remonstrances 
of  half  a  dozen  invalids  who  were  quartered  in  the  pre- 
cincts, they  carried  off  sixteen  cannon  and  a  hundred 
barrels  of  powder  with  which  to  load  them. 

Outside  the  glacis  of  the  earthworks  which  General 
Gage  in  hot  haste  was  now  constructing  across  Boston 
Neck,  British  rule  was  dead.  The  condition  of  New 
England  then,  and  throughout  the  winter,  has  no  par- 
allel in  history.  Elsewhere  provinces  and  nations,  while 
in  open  and  declared  revolt  against  their  former  rulers, 
have  been  under  the  control  of  an  organised  and  estab- 
lished government  of  their  own.  But  by  the  end  of  the 
year  1774,  throughout  the  northern  colonies,  the  old 
machinery  of  administration  had  ceased  to  work,  and  it 
had  not  been  replaced  by  new.  Elsewhere,  as  in  pro- 
vincial France  after  the  fall  of  the  Bastile,  and  in  rural 
Ireland  more  than  once  in  the  course  of  more  than  one 
century,  the  written  law  lost  its  terrors  and  was  not 
obeyed.  But  in  New  England,  though  the  tribunals 
were  void  and  silent,  crime  was  repressed  and  private 
rights  were  secure,  because  the  people  were  a  law  to 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  29 1 

themselves.  It  was  as  if  in  a  quiet  English  county 
there  were  no  assizes,  no  quarter  and  petty  sessions, 
and  no  official  personage  above  the  rank  of  a  parish 
overseer.  The  Selectmen  of  the  townships  were  the 
most  exalted  functionaries  who  continued  to  perform 
their  duties.  Power  rested  in  each  locality  with  the 
Committees  of  Correspondence;  and  the  central  author- 
ity was  the  revolutionary  convention,  or  (as  it  called  it- 
self) the  Congress,  of  the  colony. 

In  Massachusetts  that  Congress  had  even  less  than  a 
legal  title ;  for  it  sate,  deliberated,  and  even  existed  in 
defiance  of  the  constitution.  Gage  had  appointed  the 
Assembly  to  meet  at  Salem  at  the  commencement  of 
October ;  but  before  that  date  arrived  he  thought  better 
of  it,  and  issued  a  proclamation  declining  to  be  present 
as  Governor,  and  discharging  the  elected  representa- 
tives from  the  obligation  of  attendance.  The  document 
was  unusual  in  form,  but  perfectly  clear  in  meaning. 
If  the  members  of  the  Assembly  took  the  course  en- 
joined upon  them,  all  hope  of  continuing  the  struggle 
was  over,  and  they  would  have  nothing  to  do  except  to 
sit  by  their  firesides  with  hands  folded  till  their  fate 
overtook  them.  True  indeed  it  was  that  the  Congress 
of  all  the  provinces  was  still  in  session  at  the  capital  of 
Pennsylvania ;  but  the  popular  leaders  of  Massachusetts 
would  look  in  vain  to  that  quarter  for  protection.  It 
was  a  far  cry  to  Philadelphia,  and  the  danger  was 
knocking  at  their  own  door.  The  Continental  Congress 
was  nothing  more  than  an  aggregation  of  delegates, 
provided  only  with  general  instructions,  of  varying  ful- 
ness and  tenor,  from  the  colonies  by  which  they  were 
severally  commissioned.  Those  delegates  in  their  cor- 
porate capacity  were  not  inclined  to  usurp  executive 
functions ;  and  they  did  not  as  yet  think  fit  to  go  be- 
yond the  stage  of  presenting  to  the  world,  in  a  precise 
and  forcible  shape,  the  case  against  the  British  Govern- 
ment. To  make  good  that  case  by  arms,  — and  to  arms 
it  was  plain  that  the  decision  must  speedily  come,  —  it 
was  essential   that  there   should  be  an  authority  fur- 


292  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

nished  with  powers  which,  whether  constitutional  or 
not,  were  recognised  and  respected  by  the  people  in 
whose  name  they  were  exercised ;  an  authority  planted 
on  the  scene  of  action,  and  inspired  by  that  sort  of  una- 
nimity and  energy  which  actuates  men  who  know  that, 
if  they  do  not  pursue  their  forward  march  together  and 
to  the  end,  they  have  already  gone  much  too  far  for 
their  personal  safety. 

The  Massachusetts  Assembly  met.  After  waiting 
two  days  for  the  Governor  who  never  came,  the  mem- 
bers constituted  themselves  into  a  Congress  and  ad- 
journed from  Salem  to  the  more  remote  and  inaccessible 
retreat  of  Concord.  Hebrew  or  English,  the  names  of 
the  two  places  had  little  in  common  with  the  mood  in 
which  these  men  set  forth  upon  their  up-country  jour- 
ney.1 True  to  their  national  origin,  they  took  some 
pains  to  define  their  constitutional  position,  and  to  de- 
fend it  by  adducing  precedents  and  quoting  charters. 
But  they  had  attention  to  spare  for  more  pressing  busi- 
ness. They  commenced  by  ordering  "that  all  the 
matters  that  come  before  the  Congress  be  kept  secret, 
and  be  not  disclosed  to  any  but  the  members  thereof 
until  further  order  of  this  body."  Then,  on  the  twenty- 
fourth  of  October,  they  appointed  a  Committee  to  con- 
sider the  proper  time  for  laying  in  warlike  stores ;  and 
on  the  same  day  the  Committee  reported  that  the 
proper  time  was  now.  And  therefore  without  delay 
they  voted  the  purchase  of  twenty  field  pieces  and  four 
mortars ;  twenty  tons  of  grape  and  round-shot ;  five 
thousand  muskets  and  bayonets,  and  seventy-five  thou- 
sand flints.  They  made  an  agreement  to  pay  no  more 
taxes  into  the  royal  Treasury.  They  arranged  a  system 
of  assessment  for  the  purposes  of  provincial  defence, 
and  made  a  first  appropriation  of  ninety  thousand  dol- 
lars. They  then  proceeded  to  elect  by  ballot  three  gen- 
erals. They  appointed  a  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
of   which   John    Hancock  was  the   most   notable    and 

1  "  Being  King  of  Salem,  which  is,  King  of  Peace."  —  Hebrews  vii.  2. 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  293 

Joseph  Warren  the  most  active  member.  They  in- 
vested that  Committee  with  authority  to  call  out  the 
militia,  every  fourth  man  of  whom  was  expected  to  hold 
himself  ready  to  march  at  a  minute's  notice ;  —  a  con- 
dition of  service  that  suggested  the  name  of  Minute-men 
by  which  the  earlier  soldiers  of  the  Revolution  were 
called.  And,  having  done  the  best  they  knew,  they  ad- 
journed until  the  fourth  Wednesday  in  November;  by 
which  time  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  disbursing 
their  funds  thriftily,  had  bought,  in  addition  to  the  pre- 
scribed amount  of  ordnance,  three  hundred  and  fifty 
spades  and  pickaxes,  a  thousand  wooden  mess-bowls, 
and  some  pease  and  flour.  That  was  their  stock  of 
material  wherewith  to  fight  the  empire  which  recently, 
with  hardly  any  sense  of  distress,  had  maintained  a  long 
war  against  France  and  Spain,  and  had  left  them  hum- 
bled and  half  ruined  at  the  end  of  it. 

Whether  on  a  large  or  small  scale,  the  irrevocable 
step  was  taken.  The  Massachusetts  congressmen  were 
fully  aware  that,  with  the  first  dollar  which  passed  into 
the  coffers  of  their  own  Receiver-General,  the  game  of 
armed  resistance  had  begun,  and  nothing  remained 
except  to  play  it  out.  Men  in  power  had  called  them 
rebels  rudely  and  prematurely ;  and  rebels  they  now 
were  in  fierce  earnest.  In  a  series  of  Resolutions  every 
one  of  which  the  most  indulgent  Attorney-General, 
without  thinking  twice  about  it,  would  pronounce  to  be 
flat  treason,  they  gave  consistence  and  direction  to  the 
seething  excitement  of  the  province.  They  recommen  ded 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  towns  and  districts  that 
any  person  who  supplied  intrenching  tools,  boards  for 
gun  platforms,  or  draught  oxen  and  horses,  to  the  troops 
in  Boston,  ought  to  be  deemed  an  inveterate  enemy  to 
America  and  held  in  the  highest  detestation.  The 
methods  of  expressing  that  detestation  they  left,  as 
they  safely  might,  to  local  effort  and  initiative ;  for  ten 
years  of  almost  unintermittent  agitation  had  perfected 
New  Englanders  in  the  science  of  making  themselves 
unpleasant  to  those  whom  they  regarded  as  bad  friends 


294  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  the  cause.  They  most  solemnly  exhorted  "  the 
Militia  in  general,  as  well  as  the  detached  part  of  it 
in  Minute-men,  in  obedience  to  the  great  law  of  self- 
preservation,"  to  spare  neither  trouble  nor  expense  over 
the  task  of  perfecting  themselves  in  their  exercises. 
And  in  April  1775,  taking  more  upon  them  as  time 
went  on  and  perils  thickened,  they  framed  and  issued 
a  paper  of  Rules  and  Regulations  for  the  Massachusetts 
army.  They  were  not  afraid  to  notify  that  whatever 
officer  or  soldier  shamefully  abandoned  a  post  committed 
to  his  charge,  or  induced  others  to  do  the  like  when 
under  fire,  should  suffer  death  immediately.  Nor  were 
they  ashamed  to  lay  down  what,  according  to  the  tradi- 
tion of  their  colony,  was  the  right  preparation  for  that 
frame  of  mind  in  which  homely  and  half-trained  men 
may  best  meet  the  stress  of  danger.  All  officers  and 
soldiers  who,  not  having  just  impediment,  failed  dili- 
gently to  frequent  divine  service  and  to  behave  decently 
and  reverently  when  present  at  it,  were  to  be  fined  for 
the  benefit  of  sick  poor  comrades.  The  same  penalty 
was  imposed  upon  any  who  were  guilty  of  profane 
cursing  and  swearing. 

Their  statement  of  the  circumstances  on  which  they 
grounded  the  necessity  for  tightening  the  bonds  of 
military  discipline  differed  widely  from  the  preamble 
of  the  Mutiny  Act  which  annually  was  placed  on  the 
Statute-book  at  Westminster.  That  statement  consisted 
in  an  outspoken  vindication  of  religious  and  political  con- 
victions, ennobled  and  elevated  by  the  pride  of  ancestry. 
"  Whereas  the  lust  of  power,"  such  was  the  wording  of 
the  recital,  "which  of  old  persecuted  and  exiled  our 
pious  and  virtuous  ancestors  from  their  fair  possessions 
in  Britain,  now  pursues  with  tenfold  severity  their 
guiltless  children ;  and  being  deeply  impressed  with  a 
sense  of  the  almost  incredible  fatigues  and  hardships 
our  venerable  progenitors  encountered,  who  fled  from 
oppression  for  the  sake  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  for 
themselves  and  their  offspring ;  and  having  seriously 
considered  the  duty  we  owe  to  God,  to  the  memory  of 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  295 

such  invincible  worthies,  to  the  King,  to  Great  Britain, 
our  country,  ourselves,  and  our  posterity,  we  do  think 
it  our  indispensable  duty  to  recover,  maintain,  defend, 
and  preserve  the  free  exercise  of  all  those  rights  and 
liberties  for  which  many  of  our  forefathers  bled  and 
died.  And  whereas  we  are  frequently  told  by  the 
tools  of  the  Administration  that  Great  Britain  will  not 
relax  in  her  measures  until  we  acknowledge  her  right 
of  making  laws  binding  upon  us  in  all  cases  whatever, 
and  that  if  we  persist  in  our  denial  of  her  claim  the 
dispute  must  be  decided  by  arms,  in  which  it  is  said 
we  shall  have  no  chance,  being  undisciplined,  cowards, 
disobedient,  impatient  of  control;"  —  and  so  the  pas- 
sage continued  to  run  in  phrases  clearly  showing  that 
its  authors  had  got  hold  of  some  sentences  which  Eng- 
lish ministers  had  recently  spoken  in  Parliament,  and 
were  putting  their  discovery  to  a  telling  but  most  justifi- 
able use. 

Having  invested  themselves  with  the  responsibility 
of  dictating  the  policy  of  the  colony,  and  of  equipping 
it  for  self-defence,  the  representatives  of  Massachusetts 
remained  together  either  at  Cambridge  or  at  Concord, 
(as  the  chance  of  interruption  by  the  armed  hand  of 
authority  was  less  or  more  present  to  their  minds,) 
through  the  rigours  of  a  New  England  winter.  In  con- 
sideration of  the  coldness  of  the  season,  and  that  the 
Congress  met  in  a  room  without  a  fire,  it  was  resolved 
that  the  members  who  inclined  thereto  might  keep  on 
their  hats.  Resembling  in  that  respect,  but  in  few 
others,  the  British  House  of  Commons,  they  sate  almost 
continuously ;  although  they  adjourned  for  some  days 
in  order  to  observe  a  Thanksgiving  appointed  in  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  special  protection  which  Heaven 
had  extended  to  the  colony  of  Massachusetts.  Deter- 
mined to  be  thankful,  they  detected  a  mark  of  Divine 
favour  in  the  unanimity  with  which  their  province  had 
faced  the  crisis.  By  their  fervent  recognition  of  a 
blessing  that,  after  all,  was  mainly  due  to  themselves, 
they  gave  Providence,  on  the  eve  of  a  doubtful  war,  a 


296  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

significant  indication  of  the  gratitude  which  they  were 
prepared  to  feel  for  such  greater  mercies  as  it  might 
have  in  store  for  them. 

These  proceedings,  whatever  figure  they  might  event- 
ually make  in  history,  were  not  of  a  nature  to  be  con- 
templated with  equanimity  by  the  British  garrison. 
Our  troops  had  hitherto  behaved  on  the  whole  quite  as 
well  as  could  be  expected  from  men  who  were  planted 
down  in  such  a  place  for  such  a  purpose.  But,  by  the 
time  the  winter  was  over,  their  patience  had  reached 
its  limit.  In  the  first  week  of  March  the  townspeople 
assembled  to  hear  the  annual  address  in  celebration  of 
the  event  which  was  popularly  known  as  the  Boston 
Massacre.  The  scene  has  been  described  by  an  eye- 
witness, whose  point  of  view  is  not  disguised  by  his 
narrative.  "  In  the  pulpit  were  Warren,  the  orator  of 
the  day,  Hancock,  Adams,1  Church,  and  others.  Some 
of  the  gentlemen  of  the  army  had  placed  themselves  on 
the  top  of  the  pulpit  stairs.  Officers  frequently  inter- 
rupted Warren  by  laughing  loudly  at  the  most  ludicrous 
parts,  and  coughing  and  hemming  at  the  most  seditious, 
to  the  great  discontent  of  the  devoted  citizens.  The 
oration  however  was  finished,  and  it  was  moved  by 
Adams  that  an  orator  should  be  named  for  the  ensuing 
fifth  of  March,  to  commemorate  the  bloody  and  horrid 
massacre  perpetrated  by  a  party  of  soldiers  under  the 
command  of  Captain  Preston.  At  this  the  officers  could 
no  longer  contain  themselves,  but  called  '  Fie !  Shame  ! ' 

1  This  was  Samuel  Adams.  John  Adams  in  a  former  year  declined  to 
take  the  principal  part  in  the  ceremony,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  acted 
as  Captain  Preston's  advocate.  "  Though  the  subject  of  the  Oration,"  he 
said,  "  was  compatible  with  the  verdict  of  the  Jury,  and  indeed  even  with 
the  absolute  innocence  of  the  soldiers,  yet  I  found  the  world  in  general 
were  not  capable  or  not  willing  to  make  the  distinction  ;  and  therefore  I 
should  only  expose  myself  to  the  lash  of  ignorant  and  malicious  tongues 
on  both  sides  of  the  question."  In  1774  he  attended  the  meeting,  and 
heard  with  admiration  John  Hancock,  who  might  be  trusted  not  to  fall 
below  the  topmost  altitude  of  the  occasion  ;  and  he  would  most  certainly 
have  agreed  with  every  syllable  which  in  1775  came  from  the  lips  of 
Warren. 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  297 

and  '  Fie !  Shame ! '  was  echoed  by  all  the  Navy  and 
Military  in  the  place.  This  caused  a  violent  confusion, 
and  in  an  instant  the  windows  were  thrown  open  and 
the  affrighted  Yankees  jumped  out  by  fifties." 

The  ludicrous  parts  of  Warren's  speech  were,  it  may 
be  presumed,  his  references  to  the  Bible ;  and  the 
promise  (which  he  kept)  to  give  his  life  in  case  his  life 
was  wanted.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  women 
who  escaped  by  the  windows.1  In  the  spring  of  1775 
it  took  something  more  than  a  loud  noise  to  make  New 
England  men  leave  a  spot  where  their  duty  called  on 
them  to  stay.  The  commotion  grew  from  bad  to  worse 
until  an  officer,  "  dressed  in  gold  lace  regimentals,  with 
blue  lapels,"  thought  fit  to  put  a  gross  affront  upon  the 
Chairman  of  the  meeting.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
fortnight  the  army  broke  loose  from  restraint,  or  rather 
from  self-restraint;  for  those  who  ought  to  have  kept 
others  in  order  were  the  prime  actors  in  every  succes- 
sive manifestation  of  partisanship.  The  day  of  prayer 
and  fasting  ordained  by  Congress  for  the  whole  colony 
was  observed  with  marked  solemnity  in  the  churches  of 
Boston.  On  that  day  the  members  of  a  corps,  which 
was  bent  on  deserving  its  title  of  The  King's  Own, 
pitched  two  " marquee  tents"  within  ten  yards  of  the 
chapel  at  the  West  End  of  the  city,  and  played  their 
drums  and  fifes  as  long  as  the  service  lasted,  while  their 
Colonel  looked  approvingly  on.  Real  or  reputed  pa- 
triots of  all  grades  in  society  became  the  objects  of 
insult  and,  where  a  plausible  excuse  could  be  found,  of 
personal  violence.  A  party  of  officers  broke  Hancock's 
windows,  and  hacked  the  railing  in  front  of  it  with  their 
swords.  A  country  fellow  who  had  been  tempted  (or, 
as  his  friends  asserted,  entrapped)  into  buying  a  gun 
from  a  soldier,  was  tarred  and  feathered  in  the  guard- 
house of  the  regiment  and  paraded  about  the  streets  on 
a  truck,  escorted  by  a  crowd  of  all  ranks  from  the  com- 
manding officer  downwards,  and  preceded  by  a  band 
playing  "  Yankee  Doodle." 

1  American  Archives :  March  8,  1775. 


298  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Those  strains  were  not  agreeable  hearing  for  the 
crowd  before  whose  pinched  and  anxious  faces  the  pro- 
cession passed.  In  and  about  the  town  there  was 
plenty  of  employment  to  be  had  which  would  have  kept 
Boston  children  plump,  and  Boston  cottages  warm  and 
garnished.  But  for  six  months  past  all  the  mechanics 
had  struck  work  on  the  Barracks,  and  the  roughest 
labourer  refused  to  turn  a  sod  at  the  fortifications. 
They  hung  outside  the  shops  where  bricklayers  and 
carpenters,  fetched  from  Nova  Scotia,  or  (a  reflection 
more  bitter  still)  even  from  New  York,  were  freely 
spending  the  excellent  wages  which  in  such  a  strait  the 
Government  was  only  too  glad  to  pay.  They  stood  in 
line  at  the  doors  of  the  Donation  Committee,  waiting 
for  their  allowance  of  meal,  and  rice,  and  salt  fish,  the 
further  supply  of  which  was  at  that  very  moment  in  the 
act  of  being  cut  off  by  the  legislation  of  the  British 
Parliament.  They  took  their  turn  of  labour  on  munici- 
pal industries  extemporised  under  the  superintendence 
of  the  Selectmen,  and  paid  for  out  of  the  savings  of 
that  middle-class  which,  as  the  artisans  had  the  good 
sense  to  foresee  and  the  neighbourly  feeling  to  regret, 
would  soon  be  as  poor  as  themselves. 

It  was  a  cheerless  season ;  but  for  those  who  looked 
in  the  right  quarter  there  still  were  smiling  visages  to 
be  seen.  "  My  spirits  were  very  good,"  a  lady  said, 
"  until  one  Saturday  riding  into  town  I  found  the  Neck 
beset  with  soldiers ;  the  cannon  hoisted ;  and  many 
Tories  on  the  Neck,  and  many  more  going  up  to  see 
the  encampment  with  the  greatest  pleasure  in  their 
countenances,  which  gave  a  damp  that  I  had  not  before 
felt."  The  inner  thoughts  of  these  people  may  be  read 
in  a  letter  from  Dr.  Samuel  Peters,  of  Hebron  in  Con- 
necticut. That  divine  had  taken  sanctuary  in  Boston 
after  having  been  rabbled  at  home  by  fellow-townsmen 
whom  he  had  sorely  provoked,  if  any  provocation  could 
excuse  outrage.  "  I  am  in  high  spirits,"  he  wrote. 
"  Six  regiments  are  now  coming  from  England,  and 
sundry    men-of-war.      So  soon  as  they  come,  hanging 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  299 

work  will  go  on,  and  destruction  will  first  attend  the 
seaport  towns.  The  lintel  sprinkled  on  the  side-posts 
will  preserve  the  faithful."  Years  afterwards,  when 
Peters  had  long  been  resident  in  England,  his  old 
parishioners  learned  with  interest  that  the  style  of 
preaching  which  had  given  displeasure  at  Hebron  was 
too  strong  meat  even  for  a  congregation  of  Londoners. 
A  brother  exile,  who  heard  Peters  deliver  a  sermon  in 
an  English  metropolitan  pulpit,  said  that "  it  was  hard 
to  conceive  how  he  got  there."  1 

On  week-days,  when  the  Episcopal  churches  were 
closed,  the  Boston  Tories  could  draw  comfort  from  the 
periodical  effusions  of  a  vigorous  writer,  the  style  of 
whose  prophecies  and  invectives  proved  that  neither 
side  in  the  great  American  controversy  had  a  monopoly 
of  grandiloquence.  According  to  "  Massachusettensis," 
the  Boston  Committee  of  Correspondence  was  the  foulest, 
subtlest,  and  most  venomous  thing  that  had  ever  issued 
from  the  eggs  of  the  serpent  of  sedition ;  —  a  knot  of 
demagogues,  who  did  for  their  dupes  no  more  solid 
service  than  that  of  inducing  them  to  swallow  a  chimera 
for  breakfast.  The  point  of  the  observation  was  all  the 
sharper  at  a  time  when  the  families  of  citizens  who 
followed  Hancock  and  Warren  were  in  a  fair  way  to 
have  very  little  indeed  that  was  more  substantial  for 
breakfast,  dinner,  or  supper  either.  Such  was  the  con- 
dition of  mutual  charity  and  good-will  to  which  George 
the  Third  had  reduced  the  inhabitants  of  a  colony  into 
whose  local  elections,  at  a  date  as  recent  as  ten  years 
before,  the  element  of  political  partisanship  had  not 
even  entered.  1766  was  the  first  year  in  which  the 
Selectmen  of  even  so  considerable  a  place  as  Braintree 
were  chosen  for  their  politics.  The  waters  of  strife  had 
then  been  first  stirred  by  a  violent  Tory  sermon.  On 
the  next  Sunday  a  Whig  clergyman  replied  by  preach- 
ing from  the  text,  "  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that 
are  Caesar's  "  ;  from  which  things  he  specially  excepted 
the  price  of  stamps  bearing  Caesar's  head. 

1  Sabine's  Loyalists,  vol.  ii. 


300  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  royalists  in  Boston,  as  they  watched  the  reviews 
on  the  Common,  and  listened  to  the  professional  opin- 
ions which  were  freely  delivered  around  them,  never 
doubted  of  a  rapid  and  triumphant  issue.  Reinforce- 
ments continued  to  arrive  from  England,  and  a  large 
body  of  marines  was  landed  from  the  squadron.  By  the 
end  of  the  year  there  were  eleven  battalions  in  garri- 
son ;  weak,  for  the  most  part,  in  numbers ;  but  well- 
housed,  splendidly  equipped,  and  brimming  over  with 
confidence.  The  British  officers  set  a  high  value  on  the 
fighting  quality  of  their  own  men,  which  indeed  it  was 
not  easy  to  over-rate.  But  the  estimation  in  which  they 
held  the  colonists  was  not  creditable  to  their  habits  of 
observation  or  to  their  knowledge  of  military  history, 
and  said  very  little  indeed  for  the  worth  of  oral  military 
tradition.  "As  to  what  you  hear  of  their  taking  arms, 
it  is  mere  bullying,  and  will  go  no  further  than  words. 
Whenever  it  comes  to  blows,  he  that  can  run  fastest 
will  think  himself  best  off.  Any  two  regiments  here 
ought  to  be  decimated  if  they  did  not  beat  in  the  field 
the  whole  force  of  the  Massachusetts  province ;  for 
though  they  are  numerous,  they  are  but  a  mere  mob 
without  order  or  discipline,  and  very  awkward  in  han- 
dling their  arms." 

That  was  the  view  of  the  regimental  officers,  who 
were  unaware  of  the  fact  that  colonists,  so  far  from 
being  awkward  with  their  weapons,  were  as  a  rule 
marksmen  before  they  became  soldiers.  The  familiar 
conversation  of  the  staff,  which  ought  to  have  been 
better  informed,  was  in  the  same  strain.  The  Quarter- 
master-General wrote  home  that  Congress  had  appointed 
three  scoundrels  to  command  the  militia.  It  was  the 
very  reverse  of  the  real  case.  The  first  commanders 
of  the  American  forces  had  indeed,  as  always  happens 
at  the  commencement  of  a  civil  war,  the  defects  of 
leaders  chosen  on  account  of  exploits  performed  many 
years  before ;  but  they  were  of  blameless  and  even 
rigid  character.  In  the  days  of  their  early  renown, 
they  had  gone  forth  against  the  power  of  France  in 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  30 1 

the  stern  conviction  that  they  themselves  were  the 
champions  of  Protestantism.  Seth  Pomeroy,  a  good 
man,  but  no  better  than  his  colleagues,  had  seen  the 
hardest  service  of  the  three.  In  September  1755  he  was 
colonel  of  a  Massachusetts  regiment  at  the  action  of 
Lake  George,  fought  by  a  colonial  officer  at  the  head 
of  sixteen  or  seventeen  hundred  rustics,  very  few  of 
whom  had  been  under  fire  before,  against  an  army 
largely  composed  of  regulars.  The  general  of  the 
French,  in  the  lightness  of  his  heart,  encouraged  his 
soldiers  with  the  assurance  that  American  Militiamen 
were  the  worst  troops  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  After 
the  battle,  a  prisoner  with  three  bullets  in  him,  he  pro- 
nounced that  in  the  morning  the  New  Englanders  had 
fought  like  good  boys,  at  noon  like  men,  and  in  the 
afternoon  like  devils ;  and  at  all  times  of  the  day  their 
aim  was  such  that  their  adversaries  "  dropped  like 
pigeons."  Pomeroy,  who  was  employed  to  bury  the 
slain,  took  measures  to  preserve  the  French  dead  from 
the  indignities  of  the  Indian  scalping-knife.  He  had 
lost  a  brother  in  the  battle.  "  Dear  Sister,"  he  wrote, 
"  this  brings  heavy  tidings :  but  let  not  your  heart  sink 
at  the  news,  though  it  be  your  loss  of  a  dear  husband. 
Monday  was  a  memorable  day ;  and  truly  you  may  say, 
had  not  the  Lord  been  on  our  side,  we  must  all  have 
been  swallowed  up."  It  was  not  the  letter  of  a  scoun- 
drel.1 But  the  deeds  of  the  colonists  in  former  battles, 
though  well  remembered  in  Paris,  were  forgotten  at 
British  mess-tables.  In  all  ranks  of  our  army  there 
unhappily  prevailed  that  contempt  of  the  enemy  before 
the  event  which  is  the  only  bad  omen  in  war ;  —  quite 
another  sentiment  from  the  invaluable  consciousness  of 
superiority  arising  from  the  experience  of  victory. 

The  latest  comers  had  some  excuse  for  their  ignorance 
of  the  country ;  for  between  them  and  the  outer  world 
an  impenetrable  veil  was  spread.  Inside  Boston  there 
was  little  to  be  learned.     Whenever  a  scarlet  coat  was 

1  Parkman's  Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  vol.  i.,  chapter  9, 


302  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  the  company,  Whigs  kept  their  own  counsel;  and 
Tories  spoke  only  pleasant  things  which,  human  nature 
being  what  it  was,  they  had  honestly  taught  themselves 
to  believe.  Beyond  the  fortifications,  over  a  breadth  of 
many  score  of  miles,  lay  a  zone  of  peril  and  mystery. 
Officers  could  not  venture  to  leave  the  precincts  of  the 
garrison  unless  they  were  accompanied  by  a  strong  force 
in  military  array  ;  and  in  the  case  even  of  such  a  force 
its  reception  depended  upon  the  character  of  its  errand. 
When  the  General  was  contented  to  march  his  people 
out  in  order  to  march  them  back  again,  —  without  at- 
tempting to  impound  military  stores  or  arrest  political 
leaders,  —  the  expedition  encountered  nothing  more  for- 
midable than  black  looks  and  closed  shutters.  In  Janu- 
ary 1775  a  party  of  infantry  proceeded  to  Marshfield, 
with  the  object  of  protecting  the  formation  of  a  Loyal 
Militia,  and  took  with  them  fire-arms  in  greater  numbers 
than  there  were  loyalists  in  the  neighbourhood  to  carry 
them.  The  troops  preserved  exact  discipline.  They 
molested  no  one,  and  no  one  molested  them.  As  long 
as  they  stayed  in  the  town,  (so  a  Government  newspaper 
in  New  York  boasted,)  every  faithful  subject  there  re- 
siding dared  freely  to  utter  his  thoughts  and  drink  his 
tea.  But  when  they  left  Marshfield,  and  returned  to 
Boston,  the  Loyal  Militia  disappeared  from  history,  and 
General  Gage  would  have  felt  more  easy  if  he  had  been 
certain  that  their  muskets  had  disappeared  with  them. 

A  month  afterwards  Colonel  Leslie  sailed  to  Marble- 
head,  for  the  purpose  of  seizing  some  artillery  which  the 
provincials  had  deposited  at  Salem  as  a  place  of  com- 
parative security.  He  landed  his  detachment  success- 
fully on  a  Sunday  morning ;  but,  when  the  alarm  reached 
the  nearest  meeting-house,  the  congregation  turned  out 
and  took  up  a  position  upon  some  water  which  barred 
his  route.  They  refused  to  lower  the  draw-bridge,  on  the 
plea  that  there  was  no  public  right  of  way  across  it ; 
and,  when  Leslie  attempted  to  lay  hands  on  a  couple  of 
barges,  the  owners  proceeded  to  scuttle  them.  The  sol- 
diers drew  their  bayonets,  and  inflicted  some  wounds  not 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  303 

so  wide  as  the  church-door  from  which  the  patriots  had 
issued,  and  only  just  deep  enough  to  allow  Salem  to  claim 
the  honour  of  the  first  drops  of  blood  which  were  shed  in 
the  Revolution.  A  loyalist  clergyman  intervened.  The 
people  agreed  to  lower  the  bridge,  and  Leslie  pledged 
his  honour  not  to  advance  thirty  rods  beyond  it.  Brave 
to  imprudence  when  duty  as  well  as  danger  lay  clear 
before  him,  he  was  not  prepared,  without  specific  orders 
from  a  high  quarter,  to  light  the  match  which  would  set 
the  thirteen  colonies  in  a  blaze.  He  recalled  his  men, 
and  re-embarked  them  empty-handed  just  as  the  company 
of  minute-men  from  the  next  township,  with  plenty  more 
of  their  like  to  follow,  came  marching  in  to  the  help  of 
Salem. 

A  countryside,  in  this  state  of  effervescence,  presented 
few  attractions  even  to  the  most  adventurous  officers  of 
the  garrison ;  whether  they  were  sportsmen,  or  students 
of  manners,  or  explorers  of  the  picturesque.  But  never- 
theless one  of  their  number  has  left  a  narrative  which 
affords  a  glimpse  of  New  England  in  the  February 
of  1775.  Gage  despatched  a  captain  and  an  ensign 
through  the  counties  of  Suffolk  and  Worcester,  with 
a  commission  to  sketch  the  roads,  to  observe  and  re- 
port upon  the  defiles,  and  to  obtain  information  about 
forage  and  provisions.  They  dressed  themselves  as 
countrymen,  in  "brown  clothes,  and  reddish  handker- 
chiefs." Their  disguise  was  so  far  artistic  that,  on 
their  return,  the  General  and  his  staff  mistook  them  for 
what  they  pretended  to  be ;  though  during  their  expedi- 
tion no  one,  either  friend  or  foe,  looked  at  them  twice 
without  detecting  what  they  were.  They  stopped  at  a 
tavern  for  their  dinner,  which  was  brought  them  by  a 
black  woman.  "  At  first  she  was  very  civil,  but  after- 
wards began  to  eye  us  very  attentively.  We  observed 
to  her  that  it  was  a  very  fine  country,  upon  which  she 
answered,  '  So  it  is,  and  we  have  got  brave  fellows  to 
defend  it.' "  Downstairs  she  told  the  soldier-servant, 
who  looked  still  less  of  a  ploughman  than  his  masters, 
that,  if  his  party  went  any  higher  up,  they  would  meet 


304  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

with  very  bad  usage.  Towards  the  close  of  the  day 
they  came  to  a  village  where  they  had  a  more  hearty, 
but  a  not  less  alarming,  welcome.  "  We  stopped  at  the 
sign  of  the  Golden  Ball,  with  the  intention  to  take  a 
drink,  and  so  proceed.  But  the  landlord  pleased  us  so 
much,  as  he  was  not  inquisitive,  that  we  resolved  to  lie 
there  that  night ;  so  we  ordered  some  fire  to  be  made, 
and  to  get  us  some  coffee.  He  told  us  we  might  have 
what  we  pleased,  either  Tea  or  Coffee."  Their  relief 
on  hearing  the  Shibboleth  of  loyalty  was  more  than 
balanced  by  the  reflection  that  this  landlord  was  not 
inquisitive  only  because  he  had  seen  all  he  wanted  with- 
out needing  to  ask  a  single  question. 

Another  stage  of  their  journey  brought  them  to 
Worcester.  "The  next  day  being  Sunday  we  could 
not  think  of  travelling,  as  it  was  not  the  custom  of  the 
country.  Nor  dare  we  stir  out  until  the  evening,  be- 
cause nobody  is  allowed  to  walk  the  street  during  divine 
service  without  being  taken  up  and  examined :  so  that 
we  thought  it  prudent  to  stay  at  home,  where  we  wrote 
and  corrected  our  sketches.  On  our  asking  what  the 
landlord  could  give  us  for  breakfast,  he  told  us  Tea  or 
anything  else  we  chose.  That  was  an  open  confession 
what  he  was :  but  for  fear  he  might  be  imprudent,  we 
did  not  tell  him  who  we  were,  though  we  were  certain 
he  knew  it.  At  Shrewsbury  we  were  overtaken  by  a 
horseman  who  examined  us  very  attentively,  and  espe- 
cially me,  whom  he  looked  at  from  head  to  foot  as  if  he 
wanted  to  know  me  again,  and  then  rode  off  pretty 
hard."  They  got  their  meal  at  an  inn,  and  had  an 
opportunity  of  watching  from  the  window  a  company 
of  militia  at  drill.  "  The  commander  made  a  very  elo- 
quent speech,  recommending  patience,  coolness,  and 
bravery,  (which  indeed  they  much  wanted;)  quoted 
Caesar,  Pompey,  and  Brigadiers  Putnam  and  Ward ; 
recommended  them  to  wait  for  the  English  fire,  and 
told  them  they  would  always  conquer  if  they  did  not 
break ;  put  them  in  mind  of  Cape  Breton,  and  observed 
that  the  Regulars  in  the  last  war  must  have  been  ruined 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  305 

but  for  them.  After  a  learned  and  spirited  harangue 
he  dismissed  the  parade,  and  the  whole  company  drank 
until  nine  o'clock,  and  then  returned  to  their  homes  full 
of  pot-valour."  The  allusion  to  Cape  Breton  showed 
that  the  rank  and  file  of  the  colonial  militia  were  famil- 
iar with  the  true  history  of  that  first  siege  of  Louisburg 
which  Sandwich  had  so  woefully  garbled  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  Peers. 

On  their  way  to  Marlborough  the  two  officers  were 
accosted  by  riders,  who  asked  them  point-blank  whether 
they  were  in  the  army,  and  then  passed  on  towards  the 
town.  They  arrived  after  nightfall,  in  what  now  would 
be  called  a  blizzard ;  but  the  street  was  alive  and  buzz- 
ing. They  were  waylaid  and  interrogated  by  a  baker 
who,  as  they  afterwards  learned,  had  a  deserter  from 
their  own  regiment  harboured  on  his  premises.  They 
had  hardly  entered  the  dwelling  of  Mr.  Barnes,  a  well- 
to-do  loyalist,  when  the  town-doctor,  who  had  not  been 
inside  their  host's  door  for  two  years  past,  invited  him- 
self to  supper  and  fell  to  cross-examining  the  children 
about  their  father's  guests.  They  were  sent  off  again 
into  the  darkness  at  once,  and  not  a  minute  too  soon ; 
for  immediately  after  their  departure  the  Committee  of 
Correspondence  invaded  the  house,  searched  it  from 
garret  to  cellar,  and  told  the  owner  that,  if  they  had 
caught  his  visitors  under  his  roof,  they  would  have 
pulled  it  down  about  his  ears.1  It  was  not  until  the 
travellers  had  completed  a  march  of  two  and  thirty 
miles  through  wind  and  snow  that  they  reached  a 
friendly  refuge,  and  were  comforted  with  a  bottle  of 
mulled  Madeira,  and  a  bed  where  they  could  rest  in 
safety.  Next  morning  they  walked  back  to  Boston, 
having  enjoyed  the  rare  privilege  of  being  in  contact 


1  American  Archives:  Feb.  22,  1775-  The  entertainer  of  these  officers 
paid  dearly  for  his  opinions.  An  important  Whig,  whose  goods  were 
within  the  British  lines  at  Boston,  was  allowed  by  way  of  compensation  to 
use  the  furniture  of  the  Marlborough  loyalist  for  his  own  so  long  as  the 
siege  lasted.  Mr.  Barnes  was  subsequently  proscribed  and  banished.  He 
died  in  London. 


306  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

with  an  Anglo-Saxon  population  as  highly  charged  with 
electricity  as  any  among  the  Latin  races  at  the  most 
exciting  junctures  of  their  history. 

At  last  the  thunder-cloud  broke,  and  flash  after  flash 
lit  up  the  gloom  which  overhung  the  land.  Gage, 
rather  because  he  was  expected  to  take  some  forward 
step,  than  because  he  saw  clearly  where  to  go,  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  destroying  the  stores  which  had  been 
collected  at  Concord.  The  force  told  off  for  this  ser- 
vice, according  to  a  faulty  practice  of  those  times,  con- 
sisted of  detachments  from  many  regiments ;  and  the 
officer  in  charge  of  the  whole  was  incompetent.  The 
troops  started  before  midnight.  At  four  in  the  morn- 
ing, just  as  an  April  day  was  breaking,  they  reached  the 
village  of  Lexington,  and  found  sixty  or  seventy  of  the 
local  militia  waiting  for  them  on  the  common.  Firing 
ensued,  and  the  Americans  were  dispersed,  leaving 
seven  of  their  number  dead  or  dying.  It  was  a  chilly 
and  a  depressing  prologue  to  a  mighty  drama.  The 
British  advanced  to  Concord,  where  they  spoiled  some 
flour,  knocked  the  trunnions  off  three  iron  guns,  burned 
a  heap  of  wooden  spoons  and  trenchers,  and  cut  down 
a  Liberty  pole.  In  order  to  cover  these  trumpery 
operations  a  party  of  a  hundred  infantry  had  been 
stationed  at  a  bridge  over  the  neighbouring  river, 
and  towards  ten  o'clock  they  were  attacked  by  about 
thrice  as  many  provincials,  who  came  resolutely  on. 
After  two  or  three  had  fallen  on  either  side,  the  regu- 
lars gave  way  and  retreated  in  confusion  upon  their 
main  body  in  the  centre  of  the  town. 

Pages  and  pages  have  been  written  about  the  history 
of  each  ten  minutes  in  that  day,  and  the  name  of  every 
colonist  who  played  a  part  is  a  household  word  in 
America.  The  main  outlines  of  the  affair  are  beyond 
dispute.  When  Colonel  Smith  discovered  that  there 
was  nothing  for  him  to  do  at  Concord,  and  made  up  his 
mind  to  return  to  Boston,  he  should  have  returned 
forthwith.     As  it  was,  he  delayed  till  noon ;  and  those 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  307 

two  hours  were  his  ruin.  The  provincials  who  had 
been  engaged  at  the  bridge  did  not  push  their  advan- 
tage. They  hesitated  to  act  as  if  war  had  been  openly 
declared  against  England ;  and  they  were  not  in  a  vin- 
dictive frame  of  mind,  as  they  had  heard  nothing 
beyond  a  vague  report  of  the  affair  at  Lexington.  But 
by  the  time  the  British  commander  had  completed  his 
arrangements  for  withdrawing  from  his  position  the 
whole  country  was  up,  in  front,  around,  and  behind 
him.  Those  who  came  from  the  direction  of  the  sea 
knew  what  had  taken  place  that  day  at  early  dawn; 
and,  where  they  had  got  the  story  wrong,  it  was  in  a 
shape  which  made  them  only  the  more  angry.  From 
every  quarter  of  the  compass  over  thirty  miles  square 
the  Ezras,  and  Abners,  and  Silases  were  trooping  in. 
The  rural  township  of  Woburn  "  turned  out  extraor- 
dinary," and  marched  into  action  a  hundred  and 
eighty  strong.  The  minute-men  of  Dedham,  encouraged 
by  the  presence  of  a  company  of  veterans  who  had 
fought  in  the  French  wars,  spent,  but  did  not  waste, 
the  time  that  was  required  to  hear  a  prayer  from  their 
clergyman  as  they  stood  on  the  green  in  front  of  the 
church  steps.  Then  they  started  on  their  way,  "leav- 
ing the  town  almost  literally  without  a  male  inhabitant 
before  the  age  of  seventy,  and  above  that  of  sixteen." 
Carrying  guns  which  had  been  used  in  old  Indian 
battles,  and  headed  by  drums  which  had  beat  at  Louis- 
burg,  they  covered  the  hillsides  and  swarmed  among 
the  enclosures  and  the  coppices  in  such  numbers  that 
it  seemed  to  their  adversaries  "as  if  men  had  dropped 
from  the  clouds."  It  was  a  calamity  for  the  British 
that  the  first  encounter  of  the  war  took  place  under 
circumstances  which  made  their  success  a  military 
impossibility.  When  a  force,  no  larger  than  the  rear- 
guard of  an  army,  is  obliged  to  retreat  and  to  continue 
retreating,  the  extent  of  the  disaster  is  only  a  question 
of  the  amount  of  ground  that  has  to  be  traversed,  and 
of  the  activity  and  audacity  which  the  enemy  display. 
The  colonists  knew  the  distance  at  which  their  fire  was 


308  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

effective,  and  were  determined,  at  any  personal  risk,  to 
get  and  to  remain  within  that  range.  The  English 
regimental  officers,  whenever  one  of  them  could  collect 
a  few  privates  of  his  own  corps,  made  a  good  fight  dur- 
ing the  earlier  stage  of  the  retreat.  But,  before  they 
emerged  from  the  woods  which  lined  most  of  the  six 
miles  between  Concord  and  Lexington,  ammunition 
began  to  fail ;  the  steadier  men  were  largely  employed 
in  helping  the  wounded  along ;  many  of  the  soldiers 
rather  ran  than  marched  in  order;  and  the  column 
passed  through  Lexington  a  beaten  and,  unless  speedy 
help  should  come,  a  doomed  force. 

They  had  still  before  them  twice  as  much  road  as 
they  had  travelled  already.  But  the  very  worst  was 
over;  because  a  few  furlongs  beyond  the  town  they 
were  met  by  the  reserves  from  Boston.  The  support- 
ing body  was  better  composed  than  their  own,  for  it 
was  made  up  of  whole  regiments ;  and  it  was  much 
better  commanded.  Lord  Percy,  owing  to  stupid  blun- 
ders which  were  no  fault  of  his,  should  have  been  at 
Concord  by  eleven  in  the  morning  instead  of  being  near 
Lexington  at  two  in  the  afternoon ;  but,  now  that  he 
was  on  the  ground,  he  proved  that  he  knew  his  business. 
He  disposed  the  field  pieces  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  in  such  a  manner  as  to  check  the  provincials  and 
give  a  welcome  respite  to  Colonel  Smith's  exhausted 
soldiers.  When  the  homeward  march  recommenced, 
he  fought  strongly  and  skilfully  from  point  to  point. 
The  hottest  work  of  the  whole  day  was  as  far  along  the 
line  of  retreat  as  West  Cambridge.  It  was  there  that 
an  example  was  made  of  some  minute-men  who  had 
covered  sixteen  miles  in  four  hours  in  order  to  occupy 
a  post  of  vantage,  and  who  were  too  busy  towards  their 
front  to  notice  that  there  was  danger  behind  them  in 
the  shape  of  a  British  flanking  party.  But  the  Ameri- 
cans were  in  great  heart,  and  they  were  briskly  and 
gallantly  led.  The  senior  officer  present  was  General 
Heath,  a  brave  and  honest  man,  who  had  learned  war 
from  books,  but  who  did  well  enough  on  a  day  when 


LEXINGTON 


309 


the  most  essential  quality  in  a  commander  was  indiffer- 
ence to  bullets.  And  Warren  had  hurried  up  from 
Boston,  eager  to  show  that  his  oration  of  the  month 
before  was  not  a  string  of  empty  words.  "They  have 
begun  it,"  he  said,  as  he  was  waiting  to  cross  the  Ferry. 
"  That  either  party  could  do.  And  we  will  end  it.  That 
only  one  can  do."  From  the  moment  that  he  came 
under  fire  at  Lexington  he  was  as  conspicuous  on  the 
one  side  as  Lord  Percy  on  the  other;  and  there  was 
not  much  to  choose  between  the  narrowness  of  their 
escapes,  for  the  New  Englander  had  the  hair-pin  shot 
out  of  a  curl,  and  the  Northumbrian  had  a  button  shot 
off  his  waistcoat. 

No  courage  or  generalship  on  the  part  of  the  British 
commander  could  turn  a  rearward  march  into  a  winning 
battle.  As  the  afternoon  wore  on,  his  men  had  ex- 
pended nearly  all  their  cartridges ;  and  they  had  noth- 
ing to  eat,  for  the  waggons  containing  their  supplies 
had  been  captured  by  the  exertions  of  a  parish  minister. 
"I  never  broke  my  fast,"  so  a  soldier  related,  "for  forty- 
eight  hours,  for  we  carried  no  provisions.  I  had  my 
hat  shot  off  my  head  three  times.  Two  balls  went 
through  my  coat,  and  carried  away  my  bayonet  from 
my  side."  x  The  provincials  had  surmounted  their  re- 
spect for  the  cannon,  and  kept  at  closer  quarters  than 
ever.  As  the  tumult  rolled  eastwards  into  the  thickly 
inhabited  districts  near  the  coast,  the  militia  came  up 
in  more  numerous  and  stronger  companies,  fresh  and 
with  full  pouches.  When  the  sun  was  setting  the  re- 
tiring troops,  half  starved  and  almost  mad  with  thirst, 
came  to  a  halt  on  the  English  side  of  the  causeway  over 
which  the  Cambridge  highway  entered  the  peninsula  of 
Charlestown.  They  were  only  just  in  time.  "  From 
the  best  accounts  I  have  been  able  to  collect,"  Wash- 
ington wrote  six  weeks  later  on,  "  I  believe  the  fact, 
stripped  of  all  colouring,  to  be  plainly  this :  that  if  the 
retreat  had  not  been  as  precipitate  as  it  was,  (and  God 

1  American  Archives  :  Letter  of  April  28,  1775. 


310  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

knows  it  could  not  well  have  been  more  so,)  the  minis- 
terial troops  must  have  surrendered,  or  been  totally  cut 
off.  For  they  had  not  arrived  in  Charlestown,  under 
cover  of  their  ships,  half  an  hour  before  a  powerful 
body  of  men  from  Marblehead  and  Salem  was  at  their 
heels,  and  must,  if  they  had  happened  to  be  up  one 
hour  sooner,  inevitably  have  intercepted  their  retreat  to 
Charlestown."  That  was  the  conclusion  at  which  Wash- 
ington arrived ;  and  his  view,  then  or  since,  has  never 
been  disputed.1 

The  Americans  lost  from  ninety  to  a  hundred  men, 
of  whom  more  than  half  were  killed  outright ;  and  the 
British  about  three  times  as  many.  The  strategic  re- 
sults of  the  affair  were  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
numbers  engaged  in  it ;  for  it  settled  the  character  and 
direction  of  the  first  campaign  in  the  Revolutionary  war. 
For  fifteen  months  to  come  the  British  army  did  not 
again  take  the  open  field.  Bunker's  Hill  was  but  a 
sortie  on  a  large  scale,  and  ranks  only  as  a  terrible  and 
glorious  episode  in  the  operations  of  a  siege  which,  by 
the  time  the  battle  was  fought,  had  already  lasted  for 
the  space  of  eight  weeks.  For  when  Lord  Percy 
crossed  Charlestown  Neck,  and  General  Heath  halted 
on  Charlestown  Common,  the  invasion  of  Massachu- 
setts by  the  English  was  over,  and  the  blockade  of 
Boston  by  the  Americans  had  begun.  In  the  previous 
December  the  Secretary  at  War  had  confided  his  antici- 
pations to  the  Secretary  for  the  Colonies.  "  I  doubt," 
so  his  letter  ran,  "whether  all  the  troops  in  North 
America,  though  probably  enow  for  a  pitched  battle 
with  the  strength  of  the  Province,  are  enow  to  subdue 
it :  being  of  great  extent,  and  full  of  men  accustomed 
to  fire-arms.  It  is  true  they  have  not  been  thought 
brave,  but  enthusiasm  gives  vigour  of  mind  and  body 
unknown  before."2  As  Lord  Barrington  had  turned 
his  attention  to  the  subject  of  courage,  it  was  a  pity 

1  Washington  from  Philadelphia  to  George  William  Fairfax  in  England; 
May  31,  1775. 

2  The  Political  Life  of  Viscount  Barrington  ;  Section  viii. 


LEXINGTON  3" 

that  he  could  not  find  enough  of  it  to  tell  his  views  to 
the  King  and  the  Bedfords,  instead  of  writing  them  to 
Dartmouth,  who  knew  them  already.  But  at  sundown 
on  the  nineteenth  of  April  the  event  had  spoken ;  and 
it  mattered  little  now  what  the  English  Ministers  said, 
or  left  unsaid,  among  themselves. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    INVESTMENT    OF    BOSTON.        THE    ARRIVAL    OF    THE 
MAJOR-GENERALS.       BUNKER'S    HILL 

Massachusetts,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  had 
fought  the  first  engagement  single-handed ;  but  conse- 
quences were  sure  to  ensue  which  would  be  too  much 
for  her  unassisted  strength.  Next  morning  her  Com- 
mittee of  Safety  reported  the  condition  of  affairs  to  the 
rest  of  the  New  England  provinces,  and  urged  them  to 
send  help  and  to  send  it  promptly.  "  We  shall  be  glad," 
they  said,  "  that  our  brethren  who  come  to  our  aid  may 
be  supplied  with  military  stores  and  provisions,  as  we 
have  none  of  either  more  than  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  ourselves."  These  words  were  written  as  soon  as  it 
was  light ;  but  the  people  to  whom  they  were  addressed 
did  not  generally  wait  for  a  summons.  The  news  of 
Lexington  found  Israel  Putnam,  in  leather  frock  and 
apron,  busy  among  his  hired  men  over  the  labours  of 
his  farm.  He  started  off  on  a  round  of  visits  to  the 
nearest  towns  of  Connecticut ;  called  out  the  militia ; 
and  ordered  them  to  follow  him  as  fast  as  they  were 
mustered.  Then  he  set  out  for  Cambridge,  and  arrived 
there  at  daybreak  on  the  twenty-first  of  April,  having 
ridden  the  same  horse  a  hundred  miles  within  the 
eighteen  hours.  By  noon  on  the  twentieth  the  word 
had  got  across  the  Merrimac,  and  the  boats  on  their 
return  journey  were  crowded  with  New  Hampshire 
minute-men.  "At  dusk,"  Mr.  Bancroft  writes,  "they 
reached  Haverhill  ferry,  a  distance  of  twenty-seven 
miles,  having  run  rather  than  marched.  They  halted 
at  Andover  only  for  refreshments,  and,  traversing  fifty- 

312 


INVESTMENT  OF  BOSTON  313 

five  miles  in  less  than  twenty  hours,  by  sunrise  on  the 
twenty-first  paraded  on  Cambridge  Common." 

Rhode  Island  was  somewhat  more  deliberate  and,  as 
befitted  its  size,  more  heedful  of  its  dignity.  On  the 
twenty-fifth  of  April  the  Assembly  of  the  little  com- 
munity voted  to  raise  an  army  of  observation  which 
should  co-operate  with  the  forces  of  the  neighbouring 
colonies,  but  with  a  separate  ordnance  department  and 
a  Commander-in-Chief  of  its  own.  If  they  were  bent 
on  a  policy  of  isolation  and  punctiliousness,  they  had 
chosen  the  wrong  man  to  have  charge  of  their  troops 
in  the  field.  Nathaniel  Greene  was  a  born  soldier,  and 
had  in  him  the  material  for  making  the  sort  of  general 
under  whom  other  born  soldiers  desire  to  fight.  For 
years  past  he  would  leave  his  ordinary  occupations,  if 
for  nothing  else,  in  order  to  be  present  at  any  review 
where  a  score  of  militia  companies  were  being  put 
through  their  exercises  together.  He  had  been  seen,  in 
a  coat  and  hat  of  Quaker  fashion,  watching  the  regulars 
on  the  Common  at  Boston,  and  buying  treatises  on  the 
Military  Art  at  the  booksellers.  When  he  arrived  in 
camp  he  found  his  troops  lukewarm  for  the  cause,  and 
in  a  state  of  discipline  demanding  on  his  part  capabilities 
of  a  higher  order  than  could  be  acquired  out  of  a  drill 
book.  But  before  many  weeks  were  over  he  had  them 
thoroughly  in  hand,  and  he  showed  himself  as  eager  to 
obey  as  he  was  competent  to  command.  When  Wash- 
ington was  placed  by  Congress  at  the  head  of  the  Con- 
tinental army,  the  Assembly  of  Rhode  Island  got  the 
better  of  their  passion  for  independent  action ;  and 
Greene  had  the  satisfaction  of  placing  himself  and  his 
contingent  at  the  disposal  of  one  who,  as  the  captain  of 
a  citizen  army,  would  have  stood  a  comparison  after  the 
manner  of  Plutarch  with  any  of  those  heroes  of  antiq- 
uity whose  histories  Greene  had  so  long  and  so  lov- 
ingly studied. 

The  army  of  New  England  —  for  such  it  was,  and 
such,  by  whatever  title  it  might  be  called,  it  remained 
until   the   fate  of  New  England  was  finally  and  irrev- 


314  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ocably  decided  —  soon  attained  a  strength  of  sixteen 
thousand  men.  Of  these  Connecticut  furnished  two 
thousand  three  hundred,  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode 
Island  between  them  about  as  many,  and  Massachusetts 
the  rest.  On  the  morning  after  the  fight  General 
Heath,  before  he  handed  over  the  command,  took 
measures  to  provide  a  first  meal  for  the  assembled 
multitude.  "  All  the  eatables  in  the  town  of  Cambridge, 
which  could  be  spared,  were  collected  for  breakfast, 
and  the  college  kitchen  and  utensils  procured  for  cook- 
ing. Some  carcasses  of  beef  and  pork,  prepared  for 
the  Boston  market,  were  obtained ;  and  a  large  quantity 
of  ship-bread,  said  to  belong  to  the  British  Navy,  was 
taken."  *  Such  were  the  foundations  of  a  commissariat 
system  which,  as  long  as  Boston  was  the  seat  of  war, 
kept  itself  on  a  level  with  the  reputation  of  that  well- 
fed  neighbourhood.  The  organisation  of  the  army  in 
all  other  departments  was  loose  and  primitive,  but,  until 
the  British  garrison  should  become  numerous  enough 
again  to  take  the  offensive,  not  inefficient.  The  Con- 
gress of  Massachusetts  had  nominated  General  Arte- 
mas  Ward  to  command  their  forces ;  and  the  superior 
officers  from  the  other  colonies  copied  his  orders  of  the 
day,  and  yielded  him  as  much  obedience  as  he  cared  to 
exact,  which  was  very  little.  He  was  old  and  ill;  un- 
able to  get  on  horseback ;  and  quite  willing  to  leave  to 
his  energetic  and  enthusiastic  brigadiers  the  responsi- 
bility of  guarding  their  own  front,  when  once  he  had 
allotted  to  them  their  posts  in  the  line  of  investment. 

Elementary  as  were  their  warlike  arrangements,  the 
Americans  presented  a  formidable  appearance  when 
viewed  from  behind  the  intrenchments  opposite.  Many 
of  them  were  dressed  in  the  working  clothes  which  they 
had  been  wearing  when  the  alarm  reached  them  in 
their  fields  and  villages;  and  they  were  officered  by 
tradesmen,  and  mechanics,  and  graziers  who  differed 
little  from  those  of  their  own  class  in  Europe,  except 

1  Heath? s  Memoirs:  April,  1775. 


INVESTMENT   OF  BOSTON  315 

that  they  esteemed  themselves  as  good  as  people  who 
had  been  brought  up  to  do  nothing.  But  that  levy  of 
civilians  had  already  vindicated  their  claim  to  be  treated 
in  as  strict  conformity  to  the  laws  and  even  the  cour- 
tesies of  war,  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  thousand 
white-coated  Frenchmen,  with  a  Marshal  to  command 
them  and  with  Dukes  and  Marquises  for  their  colonels. 
Gage  soon  discovered  that,  when  he  wanted  anything 
from  the  colonists,  he  would  have  to  ask  for  it  civilly. 
After  a  long  negotiation  with  the  authorities  of  the 
popular  party  he  concluded  an  agreement  under  which 
all  inhabitants  of  Boston  who,  when  the  siege  com- 
menced, found  themselves  on  what  they  considered  the 
wrong  side  of  the  wall,  might  pass  from  town  to  country, 
(or,  as  the  case  might  be,  from  country  to  town,)  and 
take  their  chattels  with  them.  Early  in  June  the 
Americans  obtained  a  practical  recognition  of  their 
rights  as  combatants  in  the  shape  of  an  exchange  of 
prisoners ;  and  the  occasion  was  lacking  in  none  of  the 
compliments  and  hospitalities  with  which  the  chivalry 
of  warfare  has,  time  out  of  mind,  invested  that  cere- 
mony. The  event  was  the  more  grateful  to  men  of 
honour  in  both  camps  because  it  led  to  the  final  extinc- 
tion of  a  singularly  discreditable  calumny.  The  London 
Gazette,  in  an  official  account  of  the  affair  of  the  nine- 
teenth of  April,  informed  the  world  that  the  provincials 
had  scalped  the  wounded.  When  the  English  who  had 
been  captured  were  restored  to  their  regiments,  they  all, 
officers  and  men,  were  warm  in  their  expressions  of 
gratitude  for  the  kindness  they  had  met  with,  and  the 
tenderness  with  which  they  had  been  nursed ;  for  very 
few  of  them  had  been  taken  unhurt.1     From  that  day 

1  An  antidote  to  the  calumny  was  not  long  in  reaching  England.  In 
the  June  number  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  there  appeared  a  statement 
by  a  Lieutenant  of  the  King's  own  regiment.  "  I  was  wounded,"  he  says, 
"  at  the  attack  of  the  bridge,  and  am  now  treated  with  the  greatest  human- 
ity, and  taken  all  possible  care  of,  by  the  Provincials  at  Medford."  Gage 
was  expressly  told  that  his  own  surgeons  might  come  out  and  dress  the 
wounded  ;  but  there  was  no  need  of  it,  for  they  were  admirably  doctored. 
A  soldier's  wife  wrote  home  on  the  2nd  of  May  :  "  My  husband  was 


316  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

forward  nothing  more  was  heard  of  a  fable  very  unlike 
anything  which,  before  or  since,  has  appeared  in  a 
military  despatch  written  in  our  language.  The  Ameri- 
cans, if  they  had  been  on  the  watch  for  a  grievance, 
might  with  some  plausibility  have  put  forward  counter- 
charges; because,  when  a  force  loses  more  killed  than 
wounded,  there  is  ground  for  supposing  that  rough 
things  were  done  by  the  enemy.  But  they  knew  that 
hand  to  hand  fighting  is  a  rude  and  blind  business; 
they  were  satisfied  by  having  so  quickly  conquered  the 
respect  of  their  redoubtable  adversary ;  and  their  com- 
placency was  not  diminished  by  the  indignation  which 
these  mutual  amenities  excited  in  the  Boston  Tories, 
who  had  devoutly  believed  in  all  the  vaunts  that  Gage 
had  ever  uttered  about  his  fixed  determination  never  to 
treat  with  rebels. 

The  hour  was  at  hand  when  the  title  of  the  Ameri- 
cans to  rank  as  belligerents  was  to  be  severely  tested. 
In  the  early  summer  reinforcements  from  home  raised 
the  British  garrison  to  seventeen  battalions  of  infantry, 
and  five  companies  of  artillery.  Gage  had  now  at  his 
disposition  a  force  half  as  large  again  as  the  army 
which  triumphed  at  Culloden,  and  four  times  more  nu- 
merous than  the  regular  troops  who  crushed  the  rising 
of  our  Western  counties  at  Sedgemoor.  On  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  May  the  Cerberus  arrived  with  the  Major-Gen- 
erals  on  board.  They  disembarked  under  a  fire  of 
epigrams  which  their  number,  taken  in  conjunction 
with  the  name  of  the  three-headed  monster  after  whom 
their  ship  was  called,  suggested  to  those  Boston  wits 
who  had  read  Virgil,  or  at  any  rate  a  classical  diction- 
ary. It  was  an  evil  day  for  Gage  when  Burgoyne 
landed;  for  the  faults  and  the  merits  of  that  officer 
combined  to  make  him  as  dangerous  a  subordinate  as 
ever  a  commander  was  afflicted  with.      Inventive  and 

wounded  and  taken  prisoner;  but  they  use  him  well,  and  I  am  striving  to 
get  to  him,  as  he  is  very  dangerous.  My  husband  is  now  lying  in  one  of 
their  hospitals,  at  a  place  called  Cambridge.  I  hear  my  husband's  leg  is 
broke,  and  my  heart  is  broke." 


THE  MAJOR-GENERALS  317 

enterprising,  and  undeniably  gallant,  he  had  obtained 
just  enough  military  celebrity  to  turn  his  head,  and  to 
tempt  him  through  discontent  into  disloyalty  towards 
his  chief.  Before  leaving  London  he  had  been  ad- 
mitted, among  other  guests,  to  the  weekly  dinner  of  the 
Cabinet.  He  was  impressed  by  the  absurdity  of  pre- 
tending to  do  the  secret  business  of  the  State  in  "so 
numerous  and  motley  a  company ; "  but  he  had  made 
excellent  use  of  his  opportunities  for  his  own  personal 
advantage.  He  had  succeeded  in  establishing  relations 
with  great  men,  and  men  on  the  way  to  greatness,  no 
one  of  whom  was  fully  aware  how  intimate  Burgoyne 
was  with  the  others.  As  soon  as  he  was  ashore  at 
Boston  he  began  a  correspondence  with  Lord  Rochf  ord, 
who  was  a  Secretary  of  State,  and  Lord  George  Ger- 
maine,  who  seemed  likely  to  become  one ;  with  Lord 
Dartmouth,  with  the  Military  Secretary  of  the  Horse- 
guards,  and  above  all  with  the  Prime  Minister.  Bur- 
goyne's  voluminous  but  always  vivid  and  interesting 
letters,  the  burden  of  which  was  a  searching  exposure 
of  Gage's  mistakes,  ruined  that  officer  in  the  judgment 
of  his  employers,  and  remain  on  record  to  destroy  his 
chance  of  passing  in  the  eyes  of  posterity  as  an  unfort- 
unate rather  than  an  incapable  commander.  But,  how- 
ever full  Burgoyne's  sheet  might  be  with  comments 
upon  his  chief's  blundering  strategy,  there  always  was 
a  corner  kept  for  the  demands  of  self-interest.  When 
addressing  a  Minister,  or  any  one  who  had  the  ear  of  a 
Minister,  the  persuasive  Major-General  never  failed  to 
insist  on  the  paltry  nature  of  his  own  present  functions 
as  compared  with  his  abilities  and  antecedents ;  and  im- 
plored that  he  might  be  recalled  to  England  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  the  Cabinet,  by  word  of  mouth,  in- 
formation and  advice  which  he  could  not  venture  to  set 
down  in  writing. 

That  which  was  reported  about  Gage  to  Downing 
Street  was  a  grave  matter  for  him ;  but  his  fame  suf- 
fered still  more  from  the  compositions  which  his  elo- 
quent   subordinate    prepared    for    publication,    at    his 


318  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

request  and  in  his  name.  Proud  of  his  soldiership, 
Burgoyne  rated  himself  higher  yet  in  his  character  as 
an  author.  His  most  ambitious  literary  efforts  belonged 
to  the  leisure  of  a  later  period  in  his  life,  when  there 
was  no  further  demand  for  the  services  of  his  unlucky 
sword.  Up  to  1775  he  had  achieved  nothing  more  dur- 
able than  prologues  and  epilogues ;  and,  as  his  highest 
flight,  he  had  prepared  an  operatic  version  of  "  As  You 
Like  It."  One  quatrain  will  suffice  as  a  specimen  of 
the  adaptation. 

Who  was  the  man  that  struck  the  deer? 
The  badge  of  triumph  let  him  wear. 
Round  the  haunch  of  the  noble  prey 
Hail  him,  hail  him,  lord  of  the  day! 

But  Burgoyne  was  as  much  in  love  with  his  pen  as  if 
he  had  written  the  original  comedy.  That  pen  he  now 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  his  superior  in  command.  His 
style,  excellent  in  a  letter,  became  artificial  in  a  state- 
paper,  and  had  in  it  a  touch  of  rhodomontade  fatally 
unsuited  to  documents  which  dealt  with  burning  ques- 
tions at  a  time  of  almost  unexampled  seriousness.  On 
the  twelfth  of  June  General  Gage  issued  a  proclamation 
denouncing  the  rebels  who,  "with  a  preposterous  pa- 
rade of  military  arrangement,  affected  to  hold  the  royal 
army  besieged ;  "  assuring  "  the  infatuated  multitude  " 
that  he  did  not  bear  the  sword  in  vain ;  declaring  mar- 
tial law ;  offering  pardon  to  such  as  would  lay  down 
their  arms  and  "  stand  distinct  and  separate  from  the 
parricides  of  the  constitution; "  but  excepting  from  that 
pardon,  under  any  condition  whatsoever,  Samuel  Adams 
and  John  Hancock.  No  manifesto  was  ever  worse 
adapted  to  the  taste  of  its  intended  readers,  except  per- 
haps the  celebrated  address  to  the  French  nation  in  the 
year  1792,  which  earned  for  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  a 
place  in  literature  as  the  most  unsuccessful  of  royal 
authors.  The  minute  and  affectionate  care  which  evi- 
dently had  been  bestowed  on  the  task  of  polishing  each 
of  the  bloodthirsty  sentences  in  Gage's   proclamation 


THE  MAJOR-GENERALS  319 

suggested  to  the  patriots  that  it  had  been  prompted  by 
the  devil;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  drafted  by  Bur- 
goyne,  who,  except  on  paper,  was  as  humane  a  man  as 
lived.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Gage,  after  all  the 
disasters  which  overtook  him  on  account  of  his  being 
exceedingly  dull,  contrived  to  saddle  himself  with  the 
additional  curse  of  a  reputation  for  pretentious  and  mis- 
placed cleverness. 

Burgoyne  was  on  surer  ground  when  he  was  expos- 
ing to  Cabinet  Ministers  the  defects  and  dangers  of  the 
military  situation.  He  and  his  two  colleagues  were 
filled  with  surprise  and  shame  by  the  state  of  matters 
which  they  found  at  Boston.  These  paladins  of  the 
great  war,  accustomed  to  drive  the  enemy  whenever 
and  wherever  they  met  him,  were  greeted  by  the  news 
that  a  British  force,  as  large  as  any  which  had  ever 
taken  the  field  in  America,  was  blockaded  in  its  quarters 
by  an  army  of  whose  existence  they  had  never  even 
heard  until  that  moment.  The  town  on  the  land  side, 
Burgoyne  wrote,  was  invested  by  a  rabble  in  arms 
flushed  with  success  and  insolence,  who  had  advanced 
their  sentries  within  pistol  shot  of  the  royal  outposts. 
The  servants  of  the  Crown,  and  their  well-wishers 
among  the  civil  population,  were  lost  in  a  stupefaction 
of  anger,  bewilderment,  and  despondency.  All  passes 
which  led  to  the  mainland  were  closely  beleaguered ; 
and,  even  if  the  hostile  lines  were  forced,  the  British 
were  not  in  a  condition  to  make  a  forward  movement. 
Bread  waggons,  hospital  carriages,  sumpter-horses,  and 
artillery  horses  were  wanting.  The  magazines  had  been 
left  unfurnished ;  the  military  chest  was  empty ;  and 
there  was  no  money  in  the  town.  Our  troops  were  un- 
paid, and  our  officers  could  not  get  their  bills  cashed  at 
any  sacrifice.  Even  the  five  hundred  pounds  apiece, 
which  his  Majesty  promised  that  his  Major-Generals 
should  receive  on  their  arrival,  were  not  forthcoming. 
And  all  this  at  a  time  when,  (so  Burgoyne  declared 
with  a  pathos  which  soared  above  statistics,)  a  pound  of 


\^ 


3  20  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

fresh  mutton  could  only  be  bought  for  its  weight  in 
gold.  For  the  apathy  and  dejection  which  prevailed 
among  military  people  had  gained  the  sister  service. 
The  royal  ships  lay  idle  and  helpless,  expecting  from 
day  to  day  to  be  cannonaded  at  their  moorings.  The 
crews  of  the  rebel  whale-boats  had  cleared  off  the  sheep 
and  cattle  from  the  neighbouring  islands;  had  burned 
a  British  schooner  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  Admiral ; 
and  had  carried  away  her  guns  to  arm  their  own  bat- 
teries. When  those  batteries  opened  fire,  there  would 
be  witnessed  the  most  singular  and  shameful  event  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  —  a  paltry  skirmish,  (for  Lex- 
ington was  nothing  more,)  "inducing  results  as  rapid 
and  decisive  as  the  battle  of  Pharsalia ;  and  the  colours 
of  the  fleet  and  army  of  Great  Britain,  without  a  conflict, 
kicked  out  of  America." 

The  writing  was  classical,  after  the  model  of  Junius 
rather  than  of  Julius  Caesar.  But  the  sentiments  were 
those  of  a  soldier;  and  Burgoyne  took  no  pains  to 
hide  them  in  any  company.  He  exclaimed  to  the  first 
colonist  whom  he  met,  in  the  course  of  a  talk  which 
served  the  purpose  of  the  modern  interview  of  dis- 
embarkation :  "  Let  us  get  in,  and  we  will  soon  find 
elbow-room."  The  saying  caught  the  popular  ear,  and 
the  time  was  not  far  distant  when  its  author  learned  to 
his  cost  that  it  is  more  easy  to  coin  a  phrase  than  to 
recall  it  from  circulation.  The  lie  of  the  country  was 
such  that  Burgoyne's  expression  exactly  represented 
the  necessities  of  the  hour.  To  North  and  South  of  the 
peninsula  of  Boston,  separated  from  the  town  in  each 
case  by  some  five  hundred  yards  of  salt  water,  two 
headlands  of  the  same  conformation  and  size  as  the 
peninsula  itself  ran  out  into  the  bay.1  If  Gage  made 
play  with  his  elbows,  he  would  sweep  the  heights  of 

1  All  localities  mentioned  in  the  text  may  be  identified  in  the  map  of 
"  Boston  and  its  Environs"  at  the  end  of  this  volume,  reproduced  from  the 
Atlas  accompanying  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington,  published  at  Phila- 
delphia in  1804.  The  map  has  been  partially  coloured,  and  a  certain 
number  of  additional  places  marked,  for  purposes  of  elucidation. 


THE  MAJOR-GENERALS  32 1 

Dorchester  on  his  left  hand,  and  the  heights  above 
Charlestown  on  his  right.  His  subordinates  insisted 
that  he  should  exert  himself.  As  soon  as  there  was  a 
prospect  of  fighting  under  leaders  whom  it  was  an 
honour  to  follow,  the  army  recovered  its  spirits,  and 
of  all  the  disagreeable  sensations  which  had  affected  it, 
retained  none  except  resentment.  "  I  wish  the  Ameri- 
cans may  be  brought  to  a  sense  of  their  duty.  One 
good  drubbing,  which  I  long  to  give  them,  might  have 
a  good  effect  towards  it."  That  was  how  Captain 
Harris,  a  young  man  of  spirit,  with  a  great  future  be- 
fore him,  (for  he  died  Lord  Harris  of  Seringapatam,) 
wrote  home  on  the  twelfth  of  June ;  and  by  every 
packet  which  sailed  for  England  such  letters  were  being 
posted  by  the  score. 

Gage  and  his  advisers,  with  sound  judgment,  deter- 
mined to  begin  by  occupying  the  heights  of  Dorchester. 
The  promontory  which  lay  to  the  South  was  of  the  two 
the  more  accessible  to  the  Americans ;  and,  if  they 
succeeded  in  establishing  themselves  there,  it  would  be 
a  more  tenable  post  and  a  more  formidable  menace  to 
the  garrison  of  Boston.  But  the  earlier  operations  in 
a  civil  war  are  dictated  rather  by  human  nature  than 
by  strategic  principles ;  and  the  clash  of  battle,  when 
it  arose,  broke  out  in  an  unexpected  quarter.  The 
moral  forces  at  work  in  the  Colonial  and  in  the  British 
camps  were  not  dissimilar.  General  Ward,  like  Gen- 
eral Gage  and  with  much  better  reason,  would  have 
preferred  to  strengthen  his  defences  and  stay  quiet 
behind  them  ;  but  he  too  had  brigadiers  who  were  bent 
upon  action.  An  American  council  of  war  debated  the 
proposal  to  seize  and  fortify  the  heights  of  Charlestown. 
Ward  was  against  the  plan,  and  Warren  also ;  for  it 
was  a  question  of  policy  and  not  of  valour.  But  Putnam 
took  the  other  side,  on  grounds  which  were  character- 
istic of  the  man.  The  operation  in  his  view  was  so 
critical,  and  the  position  so  exposed,  that  the  British 
would  be  irresistibly  tempted  to  attack  under  circum- 
stances which  might  be  trusted  to  bring  out  the  strong- 


322  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

est  points  of  the  colonists.  "The  Americans,"  he  said, 
"  are  not  afraid  of  their  heads,  though  very  much  afraid 
of  their  legs.  If  you  cover  these,  they  will  fight  for 
ever."  Even  such  a  qualified  species  of  courage  was 
a  great  deal  to  demand  from  men  who  had  never  been 
drilled  to  hold  up  their  heads,  and  whose  legs  had 
hitherto  been  chiefly  employed  in  walking  between  the 
plough  handles.  But  Putnam,  if  any  one,  knew  the 
best  and  the  worst  which  could  be  expected  from  his 
countrymen  at  the  stage  of  military  discipline  to  which 
they  had  then  attained.  His  opinion  carried  weight 
in  a  quarter  where,  at  that  portion  of  the  Revolution, 
the  ultimate  decision  lay.  On  the  fifteenth  of  June  the 
Committee  of  Safety  of  the  Massachusetts  Congress 
unanimously  resolved  to  advise  the  Council  of  War  that 
possession  of  the  hill  called  Bunker's  Hill  in  Charlestown 
should  be  securely  kept,  and  defended  by  sufficient 
forces. 

Next  evening  twelve  hundred  New  Englanders  were 
paraded  on  Cambridge  Common,  and  listened  to  the 
President  of  Harvard  College  while  he  invoked  the 
divine  blessing  on  an  enterprise  the  nature  of  which  was 
still  a  secret  for  almost  all  his  hearers.  They  were 
under  the  command  of  Colonel  Prescott,  who  was  old 
enough  to  have  served  at  Cape  Breton,  where  he  had 
exhibited  qualities  which  procured  him  the  offer  from 
the  British  military  authorities  of  a  commission  in  the 
regular  army.  When  night  fell  the  expedition  started ; 
the  Colonel  in  front,  and  carts  filled  with  intrenching 
tools  following  in  the  rear.  The  men  had  their  weapons, 
their  blankets,  and  one  day's  rations ;  loose  powder  in 
their  horns,  but  not  very  much  of  it ;  and  in  their 
pouches  bullets  which  they  had  cast  themselves.  Even 
so  they  had  plenty  to  carry.  Their  equipment  was 
described  by  a  lieutenant  of  the  Royal  Marines ;  a 
corps  which,  after  its  usual  custom,  contrived  next  day 
to  get  a  very  near  view  of  the  enemy.  Both  officers 
and  soldiers,  this  gentleman  wrote,  wore  their  own 
clothes ;  nor  did  he  see  any  colours  to  their  regiments. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  323 

Their  firelocks  seemed  unwieldy,  and  some  were  of 
quite  extraordinary  length ;  but  the  men,  he  remarked, 
were  mostly  robust  and  larger  than  the  English.  It 
must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  clumsy  gun  was  an 
old  friend,  with  whose  good  and  bad  qualities  they  were 
intimately  acquainted ;  which  they  preferred  even  to 
an  elegant  Tower  musket,  weighing  only  fifteen  pounds 
without  the  bayonet,  so  long  as  there  was  something  in 
front  of  them  on  which  to  rest  their  barrel. 

Prescott  made  his  way  by  the  aid  of  dark  lanterns 
over  Bunker's  Hill,  which  at  the  highest  point  rose  but 
a  hundred  and  ten  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  He 
halted  his  men  further  to  the  eastward  on  a  still  lower 
spur  of  the  same  upland.  They  looked  straight  down 
on  the  lights  of  Charlestown,  and  they  stood  within 
twelve  hundred  yards  of  the  Boston  batteries,  and  nearer 
yet  to  the  men-of-war  which  lay  in  the  channel.  Lines 
of  fortification  were  marked  out ;  arms  were  stacked ; 
and  spades  and  pickaxes  distributed.  Farmers  and 
farm-hands  wanted  no  teaching  for  that  part  of  the 
business ;  and  every  one  except  the  sentries,  officers 
and  soldiers  alike,  fell  to  work  in  silence  and  with  ex- 
traordinary speed.  When  day  broke,  —  and  on  the  sev- 
enteenth of  June,  it  was  not  long  in  appearing,  —  the 
morning  watch  on  the  British  vessels  discovered  an  in- 
trenchment  six  feet  high  where  overnight  there  had 
been  a  smooth  pasture.  The  ships,  and  the  guns  ashore, 
concentrated  their  fire  upon  the  little  redoubt,  which 
measured  fifty  yards  on  its  longest  face.  The  noise 
was  terrific,  for  the  part  of  the  squadron  which  was 
engaged  carried  eighty  cannon  on  a  broadside ;  and,  as 
the  forenoon  went  on,  the  flood-tide  brought  with  it 
several  floating  batteries  which  took  up  their  position 
within  easy  range.  The  Americans,  who  had  not  the 
means  of  replying,  liked  it  little  at  first ;  but  Prescott, 
on  the  pretence  that  he  wanted  a  better  point  of  view 
from  which  to  superintend  his  people  as  they  worked 
inside  the  wall,  sauntered  round  the  top  of  the  parapet, 
giving  directions  where  to  place  the  gun-platforms,  and 


324  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

bantering  those  who  were  not  as  handy  with  the  saw  as 
they  had  been  with  the  shovel.  A  royal  General  noticed 
him  in  his  blue  coat  and  three-cornered  hat,  and  asked 
whether  he  would  fight  The  person  to  whom,  as  it 
happened,  the  Englishman  applied  for  his  information 
was  Prescott's  own  brother-in-law  ;  who  asseverated  with 
a  great  oath  that  on  that  point  he  would  answer  in  the 
affirmative  for  his  kinsman.  More  quietly  worded  but 
sincere  and  eager  testimony  with  regard  to  the  part 
played  by  Prescott  was  given  in  much  later  years  by 
David  How  of  Haverhill  in  Massachusetts.  How  had 
been  currying  leather  in  a  small  way  before  he  joined 
the  American  army  in  1775,  and  was  still  currying 
leather  on  a  large  scale  in  1842.  A  few  months  before 
his  death  the  old  man  was  asked  about  his  experiences 
inside  the  redoubt.  "  I  tell  ye,"  he  cried,  "that  if  it 
had  not  been  for  Colonel  Prescott  there  would  have 
been  no  fight.  He  was  all  night  and  all  the  morning 
talking  to  the  soldiers  and  moving  about  with  his  sword 
among  them  in  such  a  way  that  they  all  felt  like  fight." 
If  the  cannonade  had  driven  the  Americans  from 
their  works,  there  would  have  been  bitter  disappointment 
in  the  British  garrison.  Something  was  said  at  head- 
quarters about  landing  a  force  on  Charlestown  Neck, 
and  so  taking  the  colonists  in  the  rear.  Something  was 
said  about  starving  them  into  surrender  by  stationing 
gunboats  on  either  flank  of  the  isthmus,  which  was 
only  a  hundred  yards  in  breadth  and  had  no  protection 
against  a  cross-fire.  One  or  the  other  of  the  two 
courses  would  have  been  tactically  correct,  and  our 
officers  owed  it  to  their  military  conscience  to  make  a 
pretence  of  discussing  them ;  but  neither  the  generals 
nor  the  army  were  in  a  mood  to  wait.  To  win  without 
fighting  had  no  attraction  for  men  who  on  the  last 
occasion  had  fought  without  winning.  Our  troops  were 
eager  to  try  conclusions  at  the  earliest  moment,  and 
under  difficulties  which  would  enable  them  to  show 
their  mettle.  As  soon  as  it  was  known  that  there  were 
fortifications  to  attack,  the  resolution  to  approach  them 


BUNKER'S  HILL  325 

in  front  was  automatic  and  all  but  unanimous.  By  one 
o'clock  of  the  day  four  entire  regiments,  and  twenty 
companies  of  grenadiers  and  light  infantry,  had  landed 
on  the  extreme  East  of  the  peninsula,  to  the  north  of 
Charlestown.  Howe,  who  was  in  command,  after  care- 
fully inspecting  the  ground  in  face  of  him,  sent  back 
the  barges  for  reinforcements  and  ordered  his  men  to 
take  their  dinner.  In  a  couple  of  hours  the  flotilla 
returned  with  two  more  battalions.  The  assaulting 
force  was  now  between  two  thousand  and  twenty-five 
hundred  strong ;  and  soldiers  more  full  of  heart,  and  in 
more  gallant  trim,  had  never  stepped  over  the  gunwale 
of  a  boat  on  to  soil  which  they  meant  to  make  their 
own. 

It  was  high  time  for  the  Americans  also  to  demand 
help  from  their  main  army.  Some  of  the  officers  in 
the  redoubt  thought  it  their  duty  to  go  even  further, 
and  urged  Prescott  to  claim  that  those  companies  which 
had  borne  the  labour  of  the  night,  and  the  strain  of  the 
bombardment,  should  be  relieved  by  other  troops.  Not 
a  few  of  the  minute-men,  as  inexperienced  soldiers  will, 
had  left  their  bread  and  meat  behind  them.  There  was 
no  water  to  be  had,  and  the  heat  was  stifling.  But 
Prescott  would  have  none  of  it.  The  men  might  be 
hungry  and  thirsty,  and  had  already  done  a  double  turn 
of  duty;  but  they  had  become  accustomed  to  cannon- 
balls  and,  when  it  came  to  bullets,  might  be  trusted 
better  than  any  newcomers  to  defend  the  fortifications 
which  their  own  hands  had  raised.  Those  fortifications 
consisted  of  the  redoubt,  and  a  breastwork  extending  a 
hundred  yards  towards  the  left  of  the  position.  From 
the  end  of  the  breastwork  to  the  North  shore  of  the 
peninsula  the  country  was  open.  On  that  side  the 
British  overlapped  and  threatened  Prescott's  flank ;  and 
he  accordingly  told  off  a  detachment  of  Connecticut 
militia  to  occupy  the  vacant  interval.  They  were  soon 
joined  there  by  a  fine  Massachusetts  regiment,  which 
came  fresh  from  camp ;  and  the  combined  force  sta- 
tioned themselves  along  the  foot  of  Bunker's  Hill,  well 


326  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  the  rear  of  the  redoubt.  They  were  covered  by  a  low 
fence,  stone  below  and  rails  above,  the  interstices  of 
which  they  had  stuffed  with  piles  of  hay.  A  poor 
defence  against  musketry,  and  none  whatever  against 
cannon,  at  all  events  it  marked  the  line  which  they 
meant  to  hold.  It  was  a  bulwark  much  of  the  same 
character  as  that  behind  which  their  descendants  stood 
on  the  Cemetery  hill  at  Gettysburg. 

When  the  fight  began,  the  colonists  mustered  fifteen 
hundred  men ;  quite  as  many,  if  all  present  stood  their 
ground,  as  could  be  effectively  employed  along  a  front 
of  less  than  seven  hundred  paces.  They  had  six  can- 
non ;  and  generals  in  plenty,  though  none  to  spare.  It 
was  a  day  on  which  good  example  could  not  be  too 
abundant.  The  military  etiquette  prevailing  in  the 
American  lines  wras  not  yet  rigid  enough  to  prohibit 
an  officer  of  rank  from  taking  part  in  an  operation 
outside  the  precincts  of  his  own  command.  Seth 
Pomeroy  had  borrowed  a  mount  from  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  ;  but  the  cannon-fire  which  raked  Charlestown 
Neck  was  so  hot  that  he  did  not  conceive  himself  justi- 
fied in  risking  an  animal  not  his  own  property.  His 
person,  however,  belonged  to  himself ;  so  he  walked 
across  the  isthmus  and  up  to  the  rail-fence,  where  he 
was  received  with  cheers,  and  provided  with  a  musket. 
Putnam,  who  had  horses  of  his  own  and  never  spared 
them,  was  seen  during  the  course  of  the  afternoon  in 
every  corner  of  the  field.  Wherever  he  might  be,  he 
took  his  share  of  the  danger,  and  a  great  deal  more 
than  his  share  of  the  responsibility  which  was  going  a 
begging.  Warren,  the  evening  before,  had  been  in  the 
Chair  of  the  Massachusetts  Congress ;  and  he  now  came 
on  to  the  ground  with  a  bad  headache,  which  was  soon 
to  be  cured.  Like  everybody  else  on  that  day,  he  fell 
in  with  Putnam,  and  asked  him  where  would  be  the 
crisis  of  the  battle.  Putnam  directed  him  to  the  re- 
doubt ;  and,  when  he  showed  himself  within  the  enclos- 
ure, Prescott  greeted  him  warmly  and  offered  him  the 
command.     But  Warren  refused  to  take  over  a  trust 


BUNKER'S  HILL  327 

which  had  hitherto  been  so  admirably  discharged,  and 
assured  those  who  were  within  hearing  of  him  that  he 
was  only  one  of  two  thousand  who  were  marching  to 
their  assistance.  And  thereupon,  as  a  first  instalment 
of  the  promised  reinforcements,  he  placed  himself  gun 
in  hand  among  the  marksmen  who  lined  the  wall. 

He  was  just  in  time.  At  three  o'clock  the  second 
British  detachment  landed,  and  Howe  at  once  proceeded 
to  the  business  of  the  afternoon.  He  briefly  and  frankly 
explained  to  his  men  the  situation  of  the  army,  which 
nothing  could  save  except  a  victory.  "  I  shall  not,"  he 
told  them,  "  desire  one  of  you  to  go  a  step  further  than 
where  I  go  myself  ;  "  and,  whatever  the  case  might 
have  been  where  it  was  a  promise  to  his  constituents, 
when  Howe  spoke  as  a  soldier  he  acted  up  to  what  he 
said.  He  then  marched  straight  at  the  rail-fence,  with 
the  grenadiers  and  the  light  infantry  behind  him.  The 
Marines  and  the  Forty-seventh  Regiment  advanced  upon 
the  redoubt;  while  the  breastwork  was  assaulted  by 
the  Forty-third  and  the  Fifty-second,  —  numbers  which 
are  indissolubly  linked  in  the  memory  of  those  who 
have  studied  on  Napier's  pages  the  story  of  the  Light 
Division  in  the  Peninsular  War.  Such  military  rhetoric 
as  was  employed  by  the  American  leaders  was  of  the 
most  practical  character;  and  up  to  the  very  last 
moment  they  were  exhorting  their  people  to  aim  low, 
to  fire  at  the  handsome  coats,  and  above  all  to  wait  so 
long  that  there  could  be  no  mistake  between  one  uni- 
form and  another. 

The  American  artillery  was  badly  served,  for  reasons 
which  it  subsequently  required  a  couple  of  court-mar- 
tials to  explain  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  exacted  too 
much  from  the  scientific  department  of  a  raw  army. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  round-shot  which  had  been 
brought  across  the  bay  did  not  fit  the  British  field 
pieces;  and  the  officer  in  charge  pronounced  the  ground 
in  his  front  so  soft  that  they  could  not  be  driven  up 
within  range  for  grape.  The  royal  troops  moved  for- 
ward steadily,  but  all  too  slowly.     They  were  burdened 


328  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

with  full  knapsacks ;  the  hay  rose  above  their  knees ; 
they  had  fence  after  fence  to  cross ;  and  they  were 
allowed  to  open  fire  too  soon.  The  colonists  would 
have  followed  the  example  ;  but  their  commanders  were 
on  the  alert.  Putnam,  at  the  rail-fence,  threatened  to 
cut  down  the  next  man  who  let  his  gun  off  without 
orders ;  and  Prescott's  officers  ran  round  the  top  of  the 
parapet  and  kicked  up  the  muzzles  of  the  firelocks. 
When  the  discharge  came  at  last,  the  execution  done 
was  very  great.  The  British  volleys,  delivered  with 
the  regularity  of  a  full-dress  review,  were  almost  disre- 
garded by  the  colonists,  who  were  loading  under  cover, 
talking  among  themselves,  and  arranging  to  shoot,  two 
or  three  together,  at  the  same  officer.  "  Before  the  in- 
trenchments  were  forced,"  wrote  Lieutenant  Clarke  of 
the  Marines,  "a  man  whom  the  Americans  called  a 
Marksman  or  Rifleman  was  seen  standing  upon  some- 
thing near  three  feet  higher  than  the  rest  of  the  troops, 
as  their  hats  were  not  visible.  This  man  had  no  sooner 
discharged  one  musket  than  another  was  handed  to  him, 
and  continued  firing  in  that  manner  for  ten  or  twelve 
minutes.  In  that  small  space  of  time  it  is  supposed  that 
he  could  not  kill  or  wound  less  than  twenty  officers.  But 
he  soon  paid  hfs  tribute;  for,  upon  being  noticed,  he  was 
killed  by  the  Grenadiers  of  the  Royal  Welsh  Fuzileers." 
The  attack  fared  badly  in  every  quarter  of  the  field. 
"Our  light  infantry,"  another  army  letter  relates,  "were 
served  up  in  companies  against  the  grass  fence.  Most 
of  our  grenadiers  and  light  infantry,  the  moment  of  pre- 
senting themselves,  lost  three-fourths,  and  many  nine- 
tenths,  of  their  men.  Some  had  only  eight  and  nine  men 
a  company  left;  some  only  three,  four,  and  five."1 
Ten  minutes,  or  it  might  be  fifteen,  of  such  work,  (for 
no  one  present  had  the  curiosity  to  take  the  time,) 
showed  the  British  leaders  that  the  position  could  not  be 
carried  then ;  and  the  less  resolute  among  them  already 
doubted  whether  it  could  be  carried  at  all.    The  assault- 

1  These  companies  are  stated  to  have  averaged  thirty-nine  men  at  the 
commencement  of  the  battle.     Clarke's  Narrative,  p.  15. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  329 

ing  force  retreated  ;  and  Howe,  with  the  composure  of  a 
man  who  had  more  than  once  been  in  affairs  which  began 
ill  and  ended  to  his  satisfaction,  rallied  and  re-formed 
his  troops  as  soon  as  he  had  withdrawn  them  out  of 
gunshot. 

The  British  advanced  a  second  time  in  the  same  style 
as  before.  The  men  were  still  overloaded.  Again  they 
came  on  firing.  Their  opponents  noticed  and  admired 
the  deliberation  with  which  they  stepped  over  the  bodies 
of  their  fallen  comrades;  for  the  acclivity  leading  up 
to  the  American  lines,  (as  was  said  of  the  face  of  the 
hill  between  Hougoumont  and  La  Haye  Sainte  by  one 
who  had  been  at  Badajos,1)  already  resembled  rather  a 
breach  after  an  assault  than  a  portion  of  a  field  of  battle. 
The  colonists  this  time  did  not  pull  a  trigger  until  the 
British  van  was  within  forty  yards,  and  then  aimed  at 
the  waist-belts.  A  continuous  stream  of  flashes  poured 
forth  along  the  whole  extent  of  the  intrenchments,  from 
the  instant  that  the  word  was  given  to  fire  until  the 
ground  in  front  was  cleared  of  all  except  the  dead  and 
wounded.  The  British  officers,  utterly  regardless  of 
everything  but  their  duty,  urged  the  men  forward  with 
voice  and  sword-hilt;  and,  where  no  officers  were  left, 
the  oldest  privates  placed  themselves  in  charge  of  the 
half  sections  which  represented  what  once  had  been 
companies.  Howe,  on  the  morning  of  Quebec,  had 
stood  with  twenty-four  others  in  a  forlorn  hope  on  the 
heights  of  Abraham  ;  but  he  was  more  alone  now.  He 
had  twelve  officers,  naval  and  military,  in  his  personal 
staff  at  Bunker's  Hill ;  and,  soon  or  late,  they  were  all 
shot  down.  Outside  the  works  no  one  could  live  ;  and 
it  was  evident,  almost  from  the  first,  that  on  this  occasion 
likewise  no  one  could  penetrate  within  them.  The 
British  regiments  once  more  fell  back  to  the  landing- 
place  :  a  repulsed  and  disordered  but,  to  their  honour 
be  it  spoken,  not  a  disorganised  or  a  routed  army. 

For  they  had  that  in  them  which  raised  them  to  the 

1  Diary  of  a  Cavalry  Officer  (Lieutenant  Colonel  Tomkinson),  p.  317. 


330  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

level  of  a  feat  of  arms  to  which  it  is  not  easy,  and  per- 
haps not  even  possible,  to  recall  a  parallel.  Awful  as 
was  the  slaughter  of  Albuera,  the  contest  was  eventually 
decided  by  a  body,  however  scanty,  of  fresh  troops. 
The  cavalry  which  pierced  the  French  centre  at  Blen- 
heim had  been  hotly  engaged  but,  for  the  most  part, 
had  not  been  worsted.  But  at  Bunker's  Hill  every 
corps  had  been  broken ;  every  corps  had  been  decimated 
several  times  over  ;  and  yet  the  same  battalions,  or  what 
was  left  of  them,  a  third  time  mounted  that  fatal  slope 
with  the  intention  of  staying  on  the  summit.1  Howe 
had  learned  his  lesson,  and  perceived  that  he  was  deal- 
ing with  adversaries  whom  it  required  something  besides 
the  manoeuvres  of  the  parade  ground  to  conquer.  And 
to  conquer,  then  and  there,  he  was  steadfastly  resolved, 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  which  respectfully  indeed, 
but  quite  openly,  made  itself  heard  around  him.  He 
ordered  the  men  to  unbuckle  and  lay  down  their  knap- 
sacks, to  press  forward  without  shooting,  and  to  rely 
on  the  bayonet  alone  until  they  were  on  the  inner  side 
of  the  wall.  He  confined  himself  to  a  mere  demon- 
stration against  the  retired  angle  within  which  the  rail- 
fence  was  situated,  and  instructed  all  his  columns  to 
converge  upon  the  breastwork  and  the  redoubt.  He 
insisted  that  the  artillery,  swamp  or  no  swamp,  should 
be  planted  where  they  could  sweep  the  fortification  with 
an  enfilading  fire.  Howe  was  loyally  obeyed,  and  ably 
seconded.  The  officers  who  had  remonstrated  with  him 
for  proposing  to  send  the  troops  to  what  they  described 
as  downright  butchery,  when  they  were  informed  of  his 
decision  returned  quietly  to  their  posts,  and  showed  by 
their  behaviour  that  in  protesting  against  any  further 
bloodshed  they  had  been  speaking  for  the  sake  of  their 
soldiers  and  not  of  themselves.  General  Clinton  had 
assumed  the  command  of  the  left  wing,  and  was  pre- 
pared to  lead  it  into  action.     From  across  the  water  he 

1  Howe  was  reinforced  by  four  hundred  additional  Marines  in  the  course 
of  the  engagement.  But,  so  far  as  is  known,  every  regiment  which  took 
part  in  the  earlier  attacks  went  forward  the  third  time  also. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  33 1 

had  perceived  two  regiments  standing  about  in  confusion 
on  the  beach.  He  threw  himself  into  a  boat,  revived 
their  courage,  re-arranged  their  ranks,  and  placed  him- 
self far  enough  in  their  front  for  every  one  to  see  how 
an  old  aide-de-camp  of  the  fighting  Prince  of  Brunswick 
stepped  up  a  glacis. 

It  detracted  nothing  from  the  merit  of  the  British 
that  their  undertaking  was  less  desperate  than  they 
were  aware  of.  They  advanced  for  the  third  time  in 
the  stern  belief  that  the  position  was  held  by  a  force 
superior  in  numbers  to  their  own,  and  amply  provided 
with  everything  which  the  defence  required.  But  the 
case  was  otherwise.  Behind  the  intrenchments  few 
had  bayonets;  and,  what  was  a  much  more  serious 
matter,  the  powder  horns  were  empty.  On  the  very 
eve  of  the  last  assault,  by  opening  some  cannon  car- 
tridges, Prescott  contrived  to  supply  his  garrison  with  a 
couple  of  rounds  a  man,  and  bade  them  not  to  waste  a 
kernel  of  it.  Now  was  the  moment  for  the  arrival  of 
those  thousands  whom  Warren  had  announced  to  be  on 
the  way ;  but  they  were  on  the  way  still,  and  not  very 
many  ever  reached  their  destination.  The  result  was 
largely  due  to  the  absence  of  a  military  system,  which 
it  remained  for  a  younger  brain  than  General  Ward's  to 
create,  and  a  stronger  hand  than  his  to  impose  upon  that 
civilian  army.  The  Commander-in-Chief  never  left  his 
house  ;  he  had  not  the  staff  officers  to  convey  his  orders ; 
and  those  orders  were  given  too  late.1  Plenty  of  troops 
marched,  but  they  did  not  start  betimes.  When  they 
reached  the  skirts  of  the  battle  they  found  no  one  with 
full  powers  to  tell  them  where  to  go,  and  to  see  that  they 

1  In  Colonel  Stark's  regiment,  when  the  word  came  to  turn  out  from 
their  quarters,  "  each  man  received  a  gill  cup  full  of  powder,  fifteen  balls, 
and  one  flint.  After  this  the  cartridges  were  to  be  made  up,  and  this 
occasioned  much  delay."  And  yet  they  were  the  first  to  arrive  of  all  the 
reinforcements. 

The  ammunition  was  prepared  in  camp  by  the  soldiers.  David  How 
of  Haverhill  has  left  a  military  diary  curiously  attractive  by  its  meagre 
simplicity.  "I  have  been  a  Running  Ball  all  day;  "  he  says  on  one  oc- 
casion.   "  I  went  to  prospeck  hill  after  I  had  done  my  Stint  Running  Ball." 


332  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

got  there ;  —  a  circumstance  the  more  serious  because 
the  conditions  of  the  conflict  were  such  that  undisputed 
authority  and  responsible  supervision  were  as  much 
needed  in  the  rear  of  the  army  as  on  the  fighting  front. 

Burgoyne  had  watched  the  track  of  Clinton's  boat 
with  much  the  same  feelings  as  those  of  Fitz  Eustace 
when  he  saw  Blount  plunge  into  the  melee  at  Flodden. 
"  For  my  part,"  (thus  he  grumbled  to  one  of  his  eminent 
correspondents,)  "  the  inferiority  of  my  station  left  me 
an  almost  useless  spectator,  for  my  whole  business  lay 
in  presiding  during  part  of  the  action  over  a  cannon- 
ade." But,  in  truth,  he  could  not  have  been  more 
usefully  occupied.  The  fire  of  his  batteries,  though 
too  distant  to  be  very  murderous,  had  a  more  deci- 
sive influence  on  the  fate  of  the  day  than  if  he  had 
been  mowing  down  whole  columns  of  infantry  with 
grape  discharged  at  point-blank  range.  To  march 
through  a  tornado  of  round-shot,  across  a  narrow  cause- 
way and  over  a  bare  hill,  into  a  torrent  of  British  bul- 
lets which  had  flowed  over  the  heads  of  those  for 
whom  they  were  intended,  would  have  tried  old  and 
well-led  troops.  The  spectators,  who  crowded  every 
coign  of  vantage  and  safety,  averred  that  Charlestown, 
whose  wooden  houses  were  going  up  to  the  sky  in 
smoke  and  flame,  added  to  the  grandeur  of  the  pano- 
rama. But  that  spectacle  did  not  increase  the  attractions 
of  the  East  end  of  the  peninsula  to  those  who  approached 
it  in  the  character  of  actors  in  the  scene.  Prescott  had 
shown  his  good  sense  when  he  pronounced  that  a 
hungry  and  weary  man  who  had  endured  a  cannonade 
was  worth  more  than  any  newcomer,  however  well  he 
might  have  slept  and  breakfasted.  Some  of  the  regi- 
mental leaders  missed  their  way.  Others  showed  hesi- 
tation, and  heard  of  it  afterwards  to  their  disadvantage. 
Many  of  the  privates  sought  shelter  after  the  undignified 
fashion,  or  an  excuse  for  retiring  in  the  disingenuous 
pretexts,  which  have  been  known  even  among  profes- 
sional armies  on  some  of  the  most  famous  days  in  history. 
They  straggled,  and  dispersed  themselves  behind  rocks, 


BUNKER'S  HILL  333 

hay-cocks,  and  apple-trees ;  or  they  went  back  in  large 
groups  around  any  of  their  comrades  who  happened  to 
be  wounded.  A  captain  of  Connecticut  militia  noticed 
that,  when  he  crossed  the  top  of  the  hill,  there  was  not 
one  company  except  his  own  in  any  kind  of  order, 
although  three  battalions  had  started  from  camp  at  or 
about  the  same  moment.  Those  battalions  might  have 
behaved  very  differently  if  the  familiar  figure  of  their 
own  General  of  brigade  or  division  had  been  there  to 
conduct  them  through  the  zone  of  panic  into  the  less 
intolerable  ordeal  of  actual  combat.  Putnam,  in  the 
short  intervals  between  the  attacks,  galloped  back  to 
do  what  he  could.  His  exertions,  however,  were  neces- 
sarily intermittent,  and  his  title  to  command  in  some 
cases  was  disputed  and  denied.  Part  of  the  reserves  ad- 
vanced as  far  as  the  rail-fence,  and  did  the  good  service 
which  might  be  expected  of  men  who  found  themselves 
at  their  posts  because  they  wanted  to  be  there,  and  not 
because  they  were  told  to  go ;  but  the  brunt  of  the  last 
onset  mainly  fell  upon  those  who  had  been  on  the  spot 
from  the  very  first.  Sooner  or  later,  and  for  the  most 
part  all  too  late,  four  thousand  of  the  colonial  troops 
passed  over  Charlestown  Neck ;  but  in  the  opinion  of 
Washington  the  Americans  actually  engaged  at  any 
one  period  of  the  day  did  not  exceed  fifteen  hundred. 

The  injunctions  both  of  Prescott  and  of  Howe  were 
observed  to  the  letter.  Our  people  came  on  without  dis- 
charging a  shot,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
every  American  bullet  told.  The  front  rank  of  the  Brit- 
ish went  down  close  to  the  wall,  and  then  those  who  came 
behind  them  were  not  long  in  going  over  it.  In  another 
moment  the  whole  South  side  of  the  redoubt  was  bris- 
tling with  bayonets ;  while,  with  their  backs  set  against 
the  opposite  parapet,  those  colonists  who  had  a  pinch 
of  powder  remaining  fired  it  off  at  the  closest  quarters. 
And  then  all  was  over.  Without  lead  or  steel,  resistance 
would  have  been  impossible  even  against  soldiers  of  a 
very  inferior  sort  to  those  who  now  were  scrambling 
across  the  earthworks  by  hundreds.      It  was  at  this 


334  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

point  of  the  battle  that  the  Fifth  Fusiliers  were  pro- 
nounced by  a  high  authority  to  have  "  behaved  the  best, 
and  suffered  the  most;  "  which  was  already  an  old  story 
with  that  glorious  regiment.  Captain  Harris,  the  young 
fellow  who  had  been  so  keen  to  fight,  was  one  of  them ; 
and  when  he  was  carried  off  the  field  to  be  trepanned, 
Lord  Rawdon,  no  bad  substitute,  succeeded  him  in  the 
command  of  his  company.  Among  the  foremost  was 
Major  Pitcairn, — the  officer  who  at  sunrise  on  the  nine- 
teenth of  April  had  given  the  word  to  fire  on  Lexington 
Common,  and  whose  noble  and  amiable  disposition  has 
been  scrupulously  recognised  by  American  historians. 
He  had  been  wounded  twice  before  in  the  course  of  the 
afternoon ;  and  he  now  died  with  four  balls  in  his  body, 
having  spent  his  latest  breath  in  calling  on  his  men  to 
show  what  the  Marines  could  do.1  Other  gallant  lead- 
ers at  Bunker's  Hill,  after  seeing  the  battle  through,  fell 
in  the  very  moment  of  success.  Colonel  Abercrombie, 
who  had  charge  of  the  Grenadiers,  was  taken  down  to 
the  boats  mortally  hurt,  and  feverishly  entreating  his 
comrades  not  to  hang  his  old  friend  Putnam,  because 
he  was  a  brave  fellow. 

Whatever  foolish  and  wrong  things  had  been  written 
or  spoken  before  the  event  there  was  no  cruelty,  and 
no  want  of  chivalry,  between  adversaries  who  had  looked 
so  close  in  each  other's  eyes.  Within  the  circuit  of  the 
rampart  the  garrison  left  more  dead  than  wounded  upon 
the  ground.  But  the  first  few  minutes  after  an  escalade 
cannot  be  regulated  by  the  laws  of  a  tournament ;  and 
determined  men  who  resist  to  the  last  do  so  with  the 
knowledge  that  they  must  take  their  chance  of  what 
will  happen  while  blood  is  hot  and  the  issue  still  doubt- 

1  A  youth  named  Oldfield,  who  had  attached  himself  to  Pitcairn,  also 
received  two  wounds ;  but  he  lived  to  fight  again,  and  often  again,  by  sea 
and  land  as  an  officer  in  the  famous  corps  with  which  at  Bunker's  Hill  he 
had  served  as  a  volunteer.  Fourteen  years  afterwards,  at  St.  Jean  d'Acre, 
he  was  interred  in  the  trenches  by  the  French,  with  his  sword  upon  him, 
as  a  mark  of  esteem  and  admiration;  and  Napoleon,  when  a  prisoner  on 
board  the  Northumberland,  spoke  to  the  Marine  officers  of  his  extraordi- 
nary valour. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  335 

ful.  The  wonder  was  that  so  many  of  the  defenders 
went  off  alive  and  free.  But  the  dry  loose  earth  rose 
in  clouds  of  dust,  and  in  rear  of  the  redoubt  the  inter- 
mingled throng  of  friends  and  foes  was  so  dense  that 
the  British  did  not  venture  to  fire.  Prescott  walked 
quietly  through  the  tumult,  parrying  thrusts  with  his 
sword,  much  as  his  grandson's  narrative  describes  Her- 
nando Cortes  on  a  certain  day  in  the  Great  Square  of 
Mexico.  Thirty  of  his  people  were  picked  up  by  the 
British,  badly  injured  though  still  living,  and  were  not 
claimed  as  prisoners  in  the  despatches.  On  no  occa- 
sion has  it  been  more  signally  proved  than  at  Bunker's 
Hill  how  all  but  impossible  it  is  to  capture  those  who  do 
not  wish  to  surrender.1 

It  would  have  gone  harder  with  the  men  from  the 
fortification  if  the  men  at  the  rail-fence  had  behaved 
less  stoutly.  They  stood  until  the  retiring  garrison  had 
passed  beyond  the  right  of  their  line.  Then  they  gave 
ground  with  a  coolness  and  deliberation  most  creditable 
to  young  troops  whose  flank  had  been  turned,  and  who 
were  now  learning  that  the  first  ten  minutes  of  a  retreat 
are  sometimes  more  dangerous  than  the  whole  of  a 
battle.  For  when  the  American  array  had  disentangled 
itself  from  the  mass  of  enemies,  and  presented  a  clear 
and  safe  mark,  the  worst  moment  of  the  day  began. 
The  volleys  of  the  British  infantry,  and  the  salvoes  from 
ship  and  battery  in  flank  and  rear,  were  not  soon  for- 
gotten by  those  who  were  exposed  to  them.  "  The 
brow  of  Bunker's  Hill,"  we  are  told,  "was  a  place  of 
great  slaughter."  It  was  there  that  Putnam,  in  lan- 
guage which  came  perilously  near  a  breach  of  the  rule 
against  swearing  in  the  Military  Regulations  of  Massa- 
chusetts, adjured  the  colonists  to  make  a  stand  and  give 
them  one  shot  more.  Pomeroy,  without  a  sword,  but 
with  a  broken  musket  in  his  hand  which  did  as  well, 

1  Gage,  in  his  official  letter,  speaks  of  "  thirty  found  wounded  in  the 
field,  three  of  which  are  since  dead."  Some  months  afterwards  special 
account  was  taken  of  ten  among  their  number;  and  seven  of  the  ten  were 
no  longer  alive. 


336  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

took  upon  himself  to  see  that  his  younger  countrymen 
marched  steadily  past  the  point  of  danger.  Warren 
never  left  the  redoubt ;  for  he  fell  where  he  had  fought, 
and  he  was  buried  where  he  had  fallen :  a  bright  figure, 
passing  out  of  an  early  chapter  of  the  great  story  as  un- 
expectedly and  irrevocably  as  Mercutio  from  the  play.1 
Pomeroy  lamented  that  on  a  day  when  Warren  —  ar- 
dent, hopeful,  and  eloquent  —  had  fallen,  he  himself, 
"  old  and  useless,"  escaped  unhurt.  He  had  not  long 
to  wait.  Having  resigned  his  post  of  Brigadier-General, 
for  which  he  no  longer  felt  himself  fit,  Pomeroy  became 
a  regimental  officer  and,  with  his  seventy  years  upon 
him,  went  campaigning  in  the  Jerseys.  A  course  of 
bivouacs  brought  him  a  pleurisy ;  and  he  died  for  Amer- 
ica just  as  certainly  as  if,  like  his  young  friend,  he  had 
been  shot  through  the  head  at  Bunker's  Hill. 

A  hundred  and  fifteen  Americans  lay  dead  across  the 
threshold  of  their  country.  Their  wounded  numbered 
three  hundred.  Of  six  American  cannon  one  was  with 
difficulty  dragged  back  to  Cambridge ;  and  under  the 
circumstances  even  that  was  much.  The  British  gave 
their  own  loss  at  a  thousand  and  forty,  of  whom  ninety- 
two  bore  the  King's  commission.  That  striking  dispro- 
portion between  leaders  and  followers  was  due  to  the 
gallantry  of  our  officers,  and  the  fatally  discriminating 
aim  of  the  minute-men.  It  reflected  nothing  whatever 
upon  the  conduct  of  the  soldiers.  Burgoyne  indeed,  in 
the  first  moment  of  surprise  and  pity,  wrote  home  that 
the  zeal  and  intrepidity  of  the  commanders  was  ill  sec- 
onded by  the  private  men,  among  whom  "  discipline,  not 
to  say  courage,  was  wanting."  But  in  after  days,  when 
something  of  the  same  kind  was  alleged  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  he  indignantly  refuted  the  charge.  It 
may  be  presumed  that,  on  thinking  it  over,  he  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  troops  who,  after  losing  three 

1  Massachusetts  Congress,  June  19,  1775:  "That  three  o'clock  be 
assigned  for  the  choice  of  a  President  of  this  Congress  in  the  room  of  the 
Honourable  Joseph  Warren,  supposed  to  be  killed  at  the  battle  of  Bunker's 
Hill." 


BUNKER'S  HILL  337 

men  out  of  every  seven,  walked  up  to  the  hostile  in- 
trenchments  without  breaking  step  or  snapping  a  flint, 
had  earned  their  day's  pay  honestly  if  ever  soldiers  did. 
Our  officers  had  looked  for  an  easy  victory,  and  had 
given  much  too  free  an  expression  to  their  anticipations. 
When  the  hour  came  they  did  not  fight  like  braggarts ; 
and  they  now  manfully  admitted  that  they  had  an  ad- 
versary with  whom  it  was  an  honour  to  measure  them- 
selves. "  Damn  the  rebels,  they  would  not  flinch,"  was 
a  form  of  words  in  which  the  most  prejudiced  subaltern 
paid  his  tribute  to  the  colonists.  And  veterans  of  the 
royal  army  unanimously  agreed  that  the  affair  had  been 
more  serious  than  anything  which  they  had  seen  at  Min- 
den,  or  had  been  told  about  Fontenoy.1  A  string  of 
chaises  and  chariots,  sent  down  to  the  water-side  by  the 
loyalists  of  the  City,  filed  slowly  back  through  the  streets. 
"  In  the  first  carriage  was  Major  Williams,  bleeding  and 
dying,  and  three  dead  captains  of  the  Fifty-second  Regi- 
ment. The  second  contained  four  dead  officers ;  and 
this  scene  continued  until  Sunday  morning,  before  all 
the  wounded  private  men  could  be  brought  to  Boston."2 
But  the  result  of  the  engagement  was  small  in  compari- 
son to  the  slaughter.  General  Gage  was  still  on  the 
wrong  side  of  Charlestown  Neck,  looking  across  it  at 
a  range  of  heights  stronger  by  nature,  and  much  more 
elaborately  fortified,  than  that  grass-grown  upland  which 
was  strewn  so  thickly  with  the  flower  of  his  army.  It 
was  a  poor  consolation  to  know  that,  as  Nathaniel  Greene 
put  it,  the  colonists  were  always  ready  to  sell  him  another 
hill  at  the  same  price.  Burgoyne  told  the  Ministry, 
plainly  and  at  once,  that  the  main  position  held  by  the 
enemy  could  not  be  carried  by  assault,  and  that,  if  the 
British  garrison  was  ever  to  leave  Boston,  it  must  go 
by  water.  And  Howe,  who  had  been  deeper  in  the 
carnage  than  Gage  and  Burgoyne,  and  whose  memory 

1  American  Archives,  from  June  18,  1775,  onward  through  July.  It 
is  noticeable,  there  and  elsewhere,  how  habitually  Minden  was  quoted  as 
the  standard  of  desperate  fighting. 

2  Lieutenant  Clarke's  Narrative. 


338  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

contained  a  larger  repertory  of  similar  battles  to  compare 
it  with,  was  never  the  same  man  again  as  when,  standing 
on  Charlestown  beach  among  his  picked  companies,  he 
gave  the  signal  for  the  first  onset.  "  The  sad  and  im- 
pressive experience,"  (so  we  are  told,)  "  of  this  murder- 
ous day  sank  deep  into  his  mind."  After  Howe  had 
succeeded  to  the  supreme  command,  it  exercised  a  per- 
manent and  most  potent  influence  on  the  operations  of 
the  war.  That  joyous  confidence  and  that  eagerness  to 
bring  matters  to  an  immediate  issue,  which  had  been 
his  most  valuable  military  endowments,  thenceforward 
were  apt  to  fail  him  at  the  very  moment  when  they 
were  especially  wanted.  Careless  as  ever  of  his  personal 
safety,  he  was  destined  to  lose  more  than  one  opportu- 
nity of  decisive  victory  by  unwillingness  to  risk  his  men's 
lives,  and  his  own  fame,  against  an  intrenchment  with 
American  riflemen  behind  it. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  BESIEGERS.   THE  GARRISON.   NAVAL  OPERATIONS 

Depression  reigned  in  the  beleaguered  city ;  but 
there  was  no  exultation  in  the  camp  of  the  besiegers. 
In  war  as  in  politics,  the  morrow  of  an  epoch-making 
event  is  not  always  a  season  of  exhilaration.  There  is 
weariness  and  disappointment,  and  a  consciousness  that 
the  thing  has  been  incompletely  done,  and  an  uneasy 
suspicion  that  it  had  better  never  have  been  attempted. 
Bunker's  Hill,  next  morning  and  for  years  to  come,  pre- 
sented to  the  colonists  who  had  taken  a  share  in  it  the 
aspect  of  something  very  much  short  of  a  Marathon. 
Contemporary  accounts  of  the  action,  it  has  been  justly 
said,  were  in  a  tone  of  apology  or  even  of  censure.1 
The  affair  produced  a  whole  sheaf  of  court-martials ;  no 
one  came  forward  to  claim  the  credit  of  it ;  and,  (what 
in  New  England  was  a  most  significant  omission,)  more 
than  one  Seventeenth  of  June  came  and  went  without  a 
proposal  being  made  to  keep  the  day  as  an  anniversary. 
The  patriots  had  expected  from  the  enterprise  tactical 
advantages  which  it  was  not  capable  of  yielding ;  and 
they  did  not  yet  perceive  that,  in  its  indirect  results,  it 
had  been  the  making  of  their  cause.  The  importance 
of  what  had  happened  was  detected  by  their  adversaries, 
and  the  most  accurately  by  those  who  knew  the  country 
best.  A  gallant  loyalist  of  Massachusetts,  who  fought 
so  well  for  King  George  that  he  rose  to  be  a  full  Gen- 
eral in  the  British  army,  regarded  Bunker's  Hill  as  a 

1  This  is  one  of  the  many  points  acutely  perceived  and  powerfully  illus- 
trated by  Mr.  Fotheringham  in  his  Siege  of  Boston. 

339 


340  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

transaction  which  controlled  everything  that  followed. 
"  You  could  not,"  he  would  say  to  his  friends  on  the 
other  side,  "  have  succeeded  without  it.  Something  in 
the  then  state  of  parties  was  indispensable  to  fix  men 
somewhere,  and  to  show  the  planters  of  the  South  that 
Northern  people  were  in  earnest.  That,  that  did  the 
business  for  you."  *  "  The  rebels,"  Gage  wrote  a  week 
after  the  battle,  "  are  shown  not  to  be  the  disorderly 
rabble  too  many  have  supposed.  In  all  their  wars 
against  the  French  they  have  showed  no  such  conduct 
and  perseverance  as  they  do  now.  They  do  not  see  that 
they  have  exchanged  liberty  for  tyranny.  No  people 
were  ever  governed  more  absolutely  than  the  American 
provinces  now  are  ;  and  no  reason  can  be  given  for  their 
submission  but  that  it  is  tyranny  which  they  have  erected 
themselves."2 

There  was  justice  in  these  conclusions,  though  they 
were  not  expressed  in  friendly  words.  Bunker's  Hill 
had  exhibited  the  Americans  to  all  the  world  as  a  peo- 
ple to  be  courted  by  allies,  and  counted  with  by  foes ; 
and  it  had  done  them  the  yet  more  notable  service  of 
teaching  them  some  home-truths.  It  was  a  marvel  that 
so  many  armed  citizens  had  been  got  together  so  quickly, 
and  a  still  greater  marvel  that  they  had  stayed  together 
so  long.  Even  a  Cabinet  Minister  could  not  now  deny 
that  as  individuals  they  possessed  the  old  courage  of  their 
race.  They  had  displayed,  moreover,  certain  military 
qualities  of  a  new  and  special  type,  such  as  were  naturally 
developed  by  the  local  and  historical  conditions  under 
which  they  had  been  born  and  bred.  But  no  one  who 
passed  the  early  hours  of  that  summer  afternoon  on  the 
hill  over  Charlestown,  and  still  more  no  one  who  wit- 
nessed the  state  of  things  in  rear  of  the  position  and 
among  the  headquarters  staff  at  Cambridge,  could  be 
blind  to  the  conviction  that  a  great  deal  would  have  to 
be  done,  and  undone,  before  the  colonies  were  able  to 

1  The  account   of  General  John  Coffin  in   Sabine's  Loyalists,  vol.  ii., 

P-  325- 

2  Gage  to  Dartmouth :  Dartmouth  MSS.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  320. 


THE  BESIEGERS  34 1 

hold  the  field  throughout  the  protracted  struggle  which 
was  now  inevitable.  The  material  was  there  —  excel- 
lent, abundant,  and  ductile  —  of  a  national  army  with 
features  of  its  own  deeply  marked ;  but  to  mould  that 
material  into  shape  was  a  task  which  would  have  to  be 
pursued  under  difficulties  of  unusual  complexity.  The 
artificer  was  already  found.  A  second  Continental  Con- 
gress had  assembled  at  Philadelphia  on  the  tenth  of 
May ;  and  Colonel  Washington,  who  from  that  day  for- 
ward attended  the  sittings  in  his  uniform,  was  Chairman 
of  all  the  Committees  appointed  to  deal  with  military 
questions.  Just  before  the  battle  took  place,  John 
Adams — resolved  to  show  that  New  Englanders  would 
welcome  a  Virginian  as  their  general,  if  a  Virginian  was 
the  right  man  —  proposed  that  the  assemblage  of  troops 
then  besieging  Boston  should  be  adopted  by  Congress 
as  a  Continental  Army,  and  indicated  Colonel  Washing- 
ton as  the  officer  best  fitted  to  command  it. 

The  suggestion  was  very  generally  approved,  and  in 
the  end  unanimously  accepted.  Washington  was  nom- 
inated as  chief  "  of  all  the  forces  then  raised,  or  that 
should  be  raised  thereafter,  in  the  United  Colonies,  or 
that  should  voluntarily  offer  their  service  for  the  defence 
of  American  liberty."  There  was  no  stint  in  the  terms 
of  his  commission ;  and  he  assumed  the  trust  in  a  spirit 
that  was  a  pledge  of  the  manner  in  which  he  would  ful- 
fil it.  He  did  not  make  a  pretence  of  begging  off ;  but 
once  for  all,  and  in  simple  and  solemn  terms,  he  desired 
his  colleagues  to  note  that  he  thought  himself  unequal 
to  the  charge  with  which  he  was  honoured.  He  refused 
a  salary,  but  agreed  to  take  his  actual  personal  expenses ; 
and  the  accounts  which  he  thenceforward  kept  for  the 
information  of  Congress  are  a  model  for  gentlemen  who 
have  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  except  to  post  up  their 
household  and  stable  books.  It  was  a  fine  example  and 
one  which,  as  the  war  progressed  and  brought  corruption 
in  its  train,  was  every  year  more  sorely  needed.  But 
Washington,  according  to  his  own  views  of  what  made 
life  best  worth  having,  surrendered  that  for  which  he 


342  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

would  not  have  been  compensated  by  the  emoluments 
of  a  Marlborough.  "  I  am  now,"  he  said  to  his  brother, 
"  to  bid  adieu  to  you,  and  to  every  kind  of  domestic 
ease,  for  a  while.  I  am  embarked  on  a  wide  ocean, 
boundless  in  its  prospect,  and  in  which  perhaps  no  safe 
harbour  is  to  be  found."  Mrs.  Washington,  like  a  true 
wife,  took  care  to  destroy  before  her  death  whatever 
written  matter  her  husband  had  intended  for  her  eyes 
alone ;  but  she  made  an  exception  in  the  case  of  the 
letter  announcing  the  news  of  his  appointment.  The 
world  can  read  that  letter  as  a  whole,  and  it  should 
never  be  read  otherwise.1 

Washington  was  the  prototype  of  those  great  Ameri- 
can generals  in  the  War  of  Secession  who,  after  receiv- 
ing a  thorough  military  education,  retired  into  civil  life 
because  they  loved  it,  or  because  the  army  in  time  of 
peace  did  not  afford  scope  for  their  energies.  Grant, 
Thomas,  and  Sherman  had  all  been  trained  at  West 
Point,  had  all  served  long  enough  to  make  themselves 
into  practical  soldiers,  and  had  all  left  soldiering  in  order 
to  seek  more  congenial  or  profitable  work  in  other  call- 
ings. Sheridan,  alone  among  the  Federal  commanders 
of  the  first  order,  had  a  continuous  military  career ;  but 
he  was  too  young  to  have  gone  from  the  army  before 
the  Civil  War  broke  out.  There  had  been  no  West 
Point  for  Washington  ;  but  the  school  which  he  had  at- 
tended was  not  lax  nor  luxurious.  Carrying  his  own 
knapsack ;  steering  through  floating  ice  a  raft  of  logs 
which  he  had  hewn  with  his  own  hatchet ;  outwitting 
murderous  Indians  whom  he  was  too  humane  to  shoot 
when  he  had  them  at  his  mercy  ;  and  then,  after  he  had 
penetrated  the  secrets  of  the  wilderness,  applying  his 
knowledge  to  the  demands  of  active  service  against  the 
French  enemy,  —  he  learned  as  much  as  his  famous 
successors  ever  gathered  in  the  classes  of  their  Acad- 
emy or  in  their  Mexican  campaigns.  Like  them,  he 
laid  aside  his  sword,  after  he  had  proved  it.     Like  them 

1  The  Writings  of  George  Washington,  by  Jared  Sparks,  vol.  iii.,  p.  2. 


THE  BESIEGERS  343 

he  resumed  it  at  the  call  of  duty.  Like  them  he  was 
not  less  of  a  soldier,  and  much  more  of  a  statesman  and 
administrator,  than  if  he  had  spent  the  whole  of  his 
early  manhood  in  the  superintendence  of  a  provincial 
arsenal  or  in  the  blockhouse  of  a  frontier  fort. 

When  Washington  entered  the  boundaries  of  Massa- 
chusetts it  became  evident  that  the  confidence  evinced 
towards  him  by  the  representatives  of  New  England  at 
Philadelphia  was  shared  by  the  great  majority  of  their 
countrymen.  The  Provincial  Assembly  presented  him 
with  a  congratulatory  Address,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
admit,  in  the  most  uncompromising  language,  the  ardu- 
ous nature  of  the  work  which  he  had  before  him.  Their 
troops,  they  confessed,  were  inexperienced  and  untrained, 
and  required  to  be  instructed  in  the  most  elementary  obli- 
gations of  the  soldier.  "The  youth  of  the  army,"  they 
said,  "  are  not  impressed  with  the  absolute  necessity  of 
cleanliness  in  their  dress  and  lodging,  of  continual  exer- 
cise and  strict  temperance,  to  preserve  them  from  dis- 
eases frequently  prevailing  in  camps,  especially  among 
those  who  from  their  childhood  have  been  used  to  a 
laborious  life."  On  arriving  at  Cambridge  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief discovered  a  condition  of  matters  for 
which  his  recollections  of  early  colonial  warfare  had 
only  in  part  prepared  him.  "I  found,"  he  said,  "a 
mixed  multitude  of  people  under  very  little  discipline, 
order,  or  government."  It  was  true  that  they  knew 
how  to  shoot ;  but,  taking  the  force  round,  they  had  only 
nine  cartridges  a  man.  One  other  military  accomplish- 
ment they  possessed,  and  they  had  exercised  it  to  good 
purpose.  From  the  brigadiers  downwards  they  all  could 
dig ;  and  in  a  marvellously  short  space  of  time  they  had 
thrown  up  a  semi-circle  of  forts,  extending  over  a  front 
of  ten  miles,  which  effectually  enclosed  the  garrison  of 
Boston  on  the  side  of  the  mainland.  Their  industry  in 
this  department  took  no  account  of  Sundays,  and  had 
something  to  do  with  that  want  of  external  smartness 
which  attracted  the  unfavourable  attention  of  their  pro- 
vincial Congress.     General  Putnam  for  instance,  who 


344  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

held  that  every  virtue,  even  the  second  on  the  list,  had 
its  times  and  seasons,  was  toiling  at  the  intrenchments  of 
Prospect  Hill  on  the  morning  of  the  eighteenth  of  June 
in  the  same  clothes  as  he  had  worn  on  the  sixteenth, 
and  through  the  dust  and  smoke  of  the  battle  of  the 
seventeenth.  In  answer  to  a  sympathetic  inquirer  he 
allowed  that  he  had  not  washed  for  eight  and  forty 
hours. 

But  by  the  end  of  June  the  immediate  danger  was 
over.  The  works  had  been  so  aptly  planned,  and  so 
vigorously  prosecuted,  that  the  steady  labour  of  another 
week  rendered  them  as  good  as  impregnable.  Towards 
the  North,  the  key  of  the  position  was  Prospect  Hill ;  or 
Mount  Pisgah,  as  these  sons  of  Puritans  preferred  to  call 
it  when  they  surveyed  from  its  commanding  summit  that 
which  they  now,  in  all  the  confidence  of  victory,  regarded 
as  the  Promised  City.  At  Roxbury  to  the  South,  opposite 
Boston  Neck,  the  ground  was  rocky  and  the  American 
engineers  had  made  the  most  of  their  advantages. 
"  Roxbury,"  an  observer  wrote,  "  is  amazingly  strong. 
It  would  puzzle  ten  thousand  troops  to  go  through  it." 
Washington  was  able  to  muster  fifteen  thousand  soldiers 
fit  for  duty ;  too  few  and  too  new  for  an  attempt  upon 
the  British  lines ;  but,  as  long  as  he  could  keep  his 
numbers  undiminished,  amply  sufficient  to  guard  his  own. 
There  was  a  breathing  space,  and  he  turned  it  to  profit. 
In  his  first  general  order  he  reminded  the  troops  that 
they  were  now  a  national  army.  "  It  is  to  be  hoped," 
he  wrote,  "  that  all  distinctions  of  colonies  will  be  laid 
aside,  so  that  one  and  the  same  spirit  may  animate  the 
whole,  and  the  only  contest  be  who  shall  render  the 
most  essential  service  to  the  great  common  cause  in 
which  we  are  all  engaged."  He  distributed  the  regi- 
ments into  brigades  and  divisions,  under  the  best  com- 
manders whom  he  could  obtain,  or  at  all  events  under 
the  least  bad  of  those  whom  he  was  obliged  to  take. 
Some  generals  were  imposed  upon  him  by  the  very 
circumstances  which  made  them  unsuitable  or  intractable. 
He  could  not  get  quit  of  Ward,  who  was  strong  in  the 


THE  BESIEGERS  345 

universal  respect  acquired  by  his  all  too  ancient  services. 
Charles  Lee  whose  pretensions  and  plausibilities,  not 
yet  brought  to  the  proof,  gained  him  an  undeserved 
reputation  in  that  homely  civilian  army,  had  usurped, 
and  for  many  months  continued  to  occupy,  the  secure 
ground  of  a  man  supposed  to  be  indispensable.  But  in 
Greene  and  Putnam,  Sullivan  and  Thomas,  Washington 
had  coadjutors  of  whom  the  first  became,  ere  very  long, 
equal  to  any  responsibility  which  could  be  imposed  upon 
him,  and  the  others  were  thoroughly  at  home  in  every 
position  below  the  very  highest. 

The  motley  host,  all  alive  with  independence  and 
individuality,  was  housed  in  appropriate  fashion.  A 
pleasing  representation  of  what  he  saw  on  the  hillsides 
to  the  West  of  Boston  has  been  left  by  the  Reverend 
William  Emerson,  of  Concord :  the  member  of  a  family 
where  good  writing  was  hereditary,  and  in  which,  two 
generations  after,  it  became  united  to  lofty  thought  and 
a  teeming  imagination.  "  It  is  very  diverting,"  the  min- 
ister said,  "  to  walk  among  the  camps.  They  are  as 
different  in  their  form  as  the  owners  are  in  their  dress ; 
and  every  tent  is  a  portraiture  of  the  temper  and  taste 
of  the  persons  who  encamp  in  it.  Some  are  made  of 
boards,  and  some  of  sailcloth.  Again,  others  are  made 
of  stone  and  turf,  brick  or  brush.  Some  are  thrown  up 
in  a  hurry ;  others  curiously  wrought  with  doors  and 
windows,  done  with  wreaths  and  withes,  in  the  manner 
of  a  basket.  Some  are  your  proper  tents  and  marquees, 
looking  like  the  regular  camp  of  the  enemy.  I  think 
this  great  variety  is  rather  a  beauty  than  a  blemish  in 
the  army." 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  however, 
there  was  a  limit  to  the  advantages  of  the  picturesque. 
The  troops  might  lodge  themselves  according  to  their 
fancy;  but  he  was  determined  that  their  superiors  should 
have  a  voice  in  settling  how  they  were  to  be  clothed. 
The  men  provided  their  own  raiment ;  and  they  were 
perpetually  trading  and  swapping  their  habiliments  and 
even  their  accoutrements,  or  they  would  not  have  been 


346  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

New  Englanders. :  Those  who  possessed  a  uniform 
had  not  yet  learned  to  take  a  pride  in  it,  as  was  shown 
on  the  seventeenth  of  June  by  some  Connecticut  troops 
who  behaved  very  creditably  in  the  battle.  "  We 
marched,"  their  commander  wrote,  "  with  our  frocks 
and  trowsers  on  over  our  other  clothes,  (for  our  com- 
pany is  in  blue,  turned  up  with  red,)  for  we  were  loath 
to  expose  ourselves  by  our  dress."  Washington  re- 
ported to  Congress  that  the  provision  of  some  sort  of 
Regulation  costume  was  an  urgent  necessity.  "  A  num- 
ber of  hunting  shirts,  not  less  than  ten  thousand,  would 
remove  this  difficulty  in  the  cheapest  and  quickest  man- 
ner. I  know  nothing  in  a  speculative  view  more  trivial, 
yet  which  if  put  in  practice  would  have  a  happier  ten- 
dency to  unite  the  men,  and  abolish  those  provincial 
distinctions  which  lead  to  jealousy  and  dissatisfaction." 
Meanwhile  he  did  his  best,  with  the  store  of  finery  which 
was  at  his  disposal,  to  establish  the  outward  signs  of  a 
military  hierarchy.  Under  a  General  Order,  Serjeants 
were  to  carry  a  stripe  of  red  cloth  on  the  right  shoulder, 
and  Corporals  one  of  green.  A  field  officer  mounted  a 
red  cockade,  and  a  Captain  a  yellow  cockade.  Generals 
were  desired  to  wear  a  pink  riband,  and  Aides-de-camp 
a  green  riband ;  while  the  person  of  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  was  marked  by  a  light  blue  sash  worn  across  his 
breast  between  coat  and  waistcoat.  As  long  as  the  head 
of  the  army  was  Washington,  he  needed  no  insignia  to 

1  All  through  the  siege,  and  for  some  time  afterwards,  David  How's 
Diary  gives  a  minute  account  of  the  traffic  which  went  on  in  the  canton- 
ments. 

"  Feb.  3,  1776.  I  drawd  a  pare  of  Breaches  out  of  the  Stores  price 
27s  6d. 

"  Feb.  6.  I  let  David  Chandler  have  my  Breaches  that  I  drawd  out  of 
the  Stores. 

"  Feb.  26.     I  sold  my  Cateridge  box  for  4*  6d  Lawfull  money. 

"March  12.  William  Parker  made  me  a  pair  of  Half  Boots.  I  sold 
William  Parker  my  old  Half  Boots  for  Two  Shilling  and  3</. 

"  May  27.  William  Parker  made  me  a  pare  of  Shoes."  It  may  be 
mentioned  that  Parker  was  a  private  in  the  same  company  as  the  writer. 

"  June  29.  I  went  to  for  teag  "  (fatigue)  "  this  Day.  I  bought  a  pare 
of  trouses  of  Serg'-  Camble  price  gs.  I  sold  A  pare  of  Trouses  To  Nathan 
Peabody  price  lew." 


THE  BESIEGERS  347 

distinguish  him.  Whether  on  foot  or  in  the  saddle, 
wherever  his  blue  coat  with  buff  facings  was  seen,  —  on 
a  Sunday  parade,  or  as  he  galloped  through  the  bullets 
to  meet  and  lead  back  into  the  fire  a  retreating  regi- 
ment,— he  looked,  every  one  of  his  many  inches,  the  king 
of  men  that  nature  had  made  him.  Those  on  whom  his 
countenance  was  turned  in  battle,  in  council,  or  in  friendly 
intercourse,  never  doubted  that  the  mind  within  was 
worthy  of  that  stately  presence.  "  I  was  struck  with 
General  Washington,"  wrote  Mrs.  Adams  to  her  hus- 
band. "  You  had  prepared  me,  but  I  thought  the  half 
was  not  told  me.  Dignity,  with  ease  and  complacency, 
the  gentleman  and  the  soldier,  look  agreeably  blended 
in  him.  Modesty  marks  every  line  and  feature  of  his 
face." 

On  grounds  of  policy,  and  from  the  bent  of  his  dispo- 
sition, the  Commander-in-Chief  missed  no  opportunity 
for  such  spectacles  and  pageants  as  the  exigencies  of 
the  time  allowed.  "  There  is  great  overturning  in  the 
camp,"  Emerson  wrote,  "as  to  order  and  regularity. 
New  Lords,  new  laws.  The  Generals  Washington  and 
Lee  are  upon  the  lines  every  day.  New  orders  from 
his  Excellency  are  read  to  the  respective  regiments 
every  morning  after  prayers."  One  of  those  Orders 
required  and  expected  of  all  officers  and  soldiers,  not 
engaged  on  actual  duty,  a  punctual  attendance  at  Divine 
Service,  to  implore  the  blessings  of  Heaven  upon  the 
means  used  for  the  public  safety  and  defence.  These 
religious  gatherings  were  occasionally  enlivened  by  a 
touch  of  genial  enthusiasm.  On  the  eighteenth  of  July 
a  message  from  Congress  was  read  to  the  troops  on 
Prospect  Hill ;  "  after  which  an  animated  and  pathetic 
address  was  made  by  the  Chaplain  to  General  Putnam's 
regiment;  and  was  succeeded  by  a  pertinent  prayer. 
General  Putnam  gave  the  signal,  and  the  whole  army 
shouted  their  loud  Amen  by  three  cheers ;  immediately 
on  which  a  cannon  was  fired  from  the  fort,  and  the 
standard  lately  sent  to  General  Putnam  flourished  in 
the   air."     On   the  banner  was   inscribed  a  short  and 


348  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

telling  Latin  phrase,  implying  that  He  who  had  brought 
the  fathers  across  the  ocean  would  not  forget  the  chil- 
dren.1 Against  one  ceremony  which,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
was  more  popular  among  New  England  troops  than  any 
other,  Washington  set  his  face  resolutely  ;  for  he  would 
not  permit  them  to  burn  the  Pope.  There  were  so  few 
Catholics  in  the  army  that  the  General  did  not  refer  to 
their  presence  as  a  reason  for  disappointing  his  soldiers 
of  a  treat  which  they  had  so  often  relished  in  their  na- 
tive villages.  He  based  his  decision  on  the  importance 
to  the  colonies  of  doing  nothing  to  alienate  the  French 
Canadians,  whose  friendship  and  alliance  the  statesmen 
at  Philadelphia  had  not  yet  despaired  of  securing. 

Washington  knew  that  something  more  than  sermons 
and  celebrations  was  required  to  make  an  aggregation 
of  human  beings  into  an  obedient  army.  "  The  strictest 
government,"  said  Mr.  Emerson,  "is  taking  place,  and 
great  distinction  is  made  between  officers  and  soldiers. 
Every  one  is  made  to  know  his  place,  and  keep  in  it." 
Discipline  and  morality  were  maintained  and  vindicated 
with  less  of  indulgence  and  connivance,  but  with  a  far 
smaller  amount  of  cruelty,  than  prevailed  in  European 
camps.  Loose  women  were  expelled  from  the  lines, 
marauding  was  severely  checked,  and  corporal  punish- 
ments were  inflicted ;  though,  (in  a  community  where 
everything  was  regulated  on  Scriptural  precedents,)  the 
number  of  lashes  appears  never  to  have  exceeded  thirty- 
nine.2     Rogues  were  in  terror,  and  laggards  found  it 

1  "  Qui  Transtulit  Sustinet." 

2  "  Feb.  7.  This  Day  two  men  In  Cambridge  got  a  bantering  who 
would  Drink  the  most,  and  they  Drinkd  so  much  That  one  of  them  Died 
In  About  one  houre  or  two  after. 

"  Feb.  10.  There  was  two  women  Drumd  out  of  Camp  this  fore  noon. 
That  man  was  Buried  that  killed  himself  drinking. 

"  March  27.  There  was  four  of  Capt.  Willey's  men  Whept,  the  first  fif- 
teen stripes  for  denying  his  Deuty :  the  2d  39  stripes  for  Stealing  and  de- 
serting :  3d  10  lashes  for  geting  Drunk  and  Denying  Duty :  4d  20  lashes 
Denying  his  Duty  and  geting  Drunk. 

"  May  r.  One  of  Cap4,  Pharinton's  men  Was  whipt  20  lashes  for  being 
absent  at  rool  Call  without  Leave. 

"  May  26.  This  Night  Mical  Bary  was  whipt  39  Stripes  for  being  absent 
at  rool  Call." 


THE  BESIEGERS  349 

their  interest  to  bestir  themselves.  But  honest  fellows 
who  did  not  shirk  their  duty  enjoyed  life  as  it  never  has 
been  enjoyed  in  any  campaign,  the  familiar  details  of 
which  have  been  noted  with  equal  minuteness.  All 
arrangements  which  bore  upon  the  health  and  the  com- 
forts of  the  private  men  were  diligently  taken  in  hand 
by  their  commander.  Regimental  officers  were  made 
answerable  for  seeing  that  every  dwelling  where  soldiers 
lived  was  cleaned  every  morning.  Camp  kitchens  were 
built ;  very  great  care  was  given  to  the  cookery ;  and 
there  was  plenty  to  cook.  "  I  doubt  not,"  King  George 
wrote  to  Lord  Dartmouth,  "  but  the  twenty  thousand 
provincials  are  a  magnified  force  occasioned  by  the  fears 
of  the  correspondent.  Should  the  numbers  prove  true 
it  would  be  highly  fortunate,  as  so  large  a  corps  must 
soon  retire  to  their  respective  homes  for  want  of  sub- 
sistence." But  there  was  very  little  prospect  of  such 
a  termination  to  the  war ;  for  the  Provincial  Assembly 
was  determined  that  the  defenders  of  the  colony  should 
be  well  on  the  right  side  of  starvation.  The  Massachu- 
setts soldier  received  every  day  a  pound  of  bread,  half 
a  pound  of  beef  and  half  a  pound  of  pork,  together 
with  a  pint  of  milk,  a  quart  of  "  good  spruce  or  malt 
beer,"  and  a  gill  of  peas  or  beans.  A  pound  and  a 
quarter  of  salt  fish  was  substituted  for  the  meat  on  one 
day  in  the  seven.  Every  week  there  were  served  out 
half  a  dozen  ounces  of  butter  and  half  a  pint  of  vinegar, 
(if  vinegar  was  to  be  had,)  to  each  of  the  men,  and  one 
pound  of  good  common  soap  among  six  of  them.  Nor 
was  that  all.  Supplies  poured  into  the  camp ;  and  the 
soldiers  bought  largely  and  judiciously,  eating  and  drink- 
ing freely  of  what  they  could  not  sell  again  at  a  profit. 
In  the  course  of  eight  days  the  caterer  of  a  single  mess 
purchased  three  barrels  of  cider ;  seven  bushels  of  chest- 
nuts ;  four  of  apples,  at  twelve  shillings  a  bushel ;  and 
a  wild  turkey  for  supper,  which  weighed  over  seven- 

"July  12.  Two  of  Cap1,  Pharinton's  men  was  whipt  39  lashes  for 
Braking  open  A  house  and  Stealing  Att  Boston."  —  David  How's 
Diary, 


350  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

teen  pounds.1  It  may  safely  be  said  that  his  Majesty, 
who  set  a  praiseworthy  example  of  abstinence  in  the 
midst  of  a  gouty  generation,  would  as  soon  have  thought 
of  consuming  the  whole  of  the  daily  ration  which  was 
placed  before  his  rebellious  subjects  as  of  adopting  their 
political  tenets. 

Within  the  city  good  eating  was  almost  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Before  the  end  of  July  Washington  had  learned 
that  the  British  troops  were  insufficiently  and  badly  fed, 
and  that  their  health  suffered.  Captain  Stanley,  who 
as  a  son  of  Lord  Derby  would  command  the  best  which 
might  be  had  for  money,  mentioned  in  a  letter  that  he 
had  only  tasted  fresh  meat  twice  since  his  arrival  in 
Boston.2  The  wounded  men,  he  said,  recovered  very 
slowly  indeed  upon  a  diet  which,  even  if  no  battle  had 
taken  place,  would  soon  have  filled  the  hospitals.  A 
local  merchant  —  writing  to  his  brother  with  a  latitude 
of  virulence  which,  in  times  of  danger  and  discord, 
civilian  partisans  too  often  allow  themselves  —  stated 
positively  that,  when  the  ammunition  in  the  pouches  of 
the  rebels  on  Bunker's  Hill  was  examined,  the  balls 
were  found  to  be  poisoned.  But  no  military  man 
believed  or  repeated  a  slander  quite  superfluous  for  the 
purpose  of  explaining  the  high  rate  of  mortality  which 
prevailed  in  the  garrison.  Our  soldiers  took  what  came 
as  the  fortune  of  war ;  and  the  fortune  of  war  was  very 
hard.  Sick  or  well,  whole  or  hurt,  they  had  nothing  to 
eat  but  salt  pork  and  peas,  with  an  occasional  meal  of 
fish.  "  An  egg  was  a  rarity,"  and  their  wretched  diet 
was  never  mended  by  so  much  as  a  vegetable  or  a  drop 
of  milk.  What  fresh  beef  there  was  in  the  town  had 
been  obtained  by  slaughtering  milch  cows  which  could 

1  David  How's  Diary  ;  January  24  to  31,  1776. 

2  According  to  the  American  satirists  the  Commander-in-Chief  himself 
was  no  better  off  than  his  regimental  officers.  In  a  contemporary  poem 
Gage  is  represented  as  exclaiming :  — 

"Three  weeks,  —  Ye  Gods!  nay,  three  long  years  it  seems 
Since  roast  beef  I  have  touched,  except  in  dreams." 


THE    GARRISON  35 1 

not  have  been  kept  alive  in  the  increasing  dearth  of 
forage.  The  daily  deaths  never  sank  below  ten,  and 
sometimes  rose  to  thirty.  From  July  onwards,  to  pre- 
vent discouragement,  no  bells  were  allowed  to  toll.  As 
summer  changed  to  autumn  and  autumn  to  winter,  the 
distress,  sharp  everywhere,  became  extreme  in  private 
families ;  and  those  were  not  few,  for  between  six  and 
seven  thousand  of  the  population  had  remained  in  the 
town.  Fresh  meat  in  July  cost  fifteen  pence  a  pound, 
and  by  the  middle  of  December  that  price  had  to  be 
paid  for  salt  provisions.  The  King's  stores  ran  so  very 
short  that  no  flour  or  pulse  could  be  spared  for  the  use  of 
non-combatants.  It  was  bitterly  cold,  and  all  the  fuel  had 
been  burned  away.  That  want  was  met  by  an  expedient 
which  excited  painful  feelings  among  the  loyalist  exiles 
across  the  ocean,1  and  was  a  cruel  sight  indeed  for  peo- 
ple who  were  still  in  their  native  city  because  they  loved 
it  so  that  they  could  not  bear  to  leave  it.  All  of  Charles- 
town  which  had  survived  the  conflagration  was  first 
pulled  down  and  issued  to  the  regiments  for  firewood ; 
and  then  the  troops  proceeded  to  help  themselves  from 
the  fences  of  the  Boston  gardens  and  the  doors  and 
rafters  of  the  Boston  houses.  The  British  General  sent 
the  Provost  Marshal  on  his  rounds,  accompanied  by  an 
executioner,  and  armed  with  powers  to  hang  on  the  spot 
any  man  who  was  caught  in  the  act  of  wrecking  a  dwell- 
ing-house. But  the  authorities  continued  to  do  on  a 
system  what  the  soldiers  had  begun  under  the  spur  of 
necessity.  A  hundred  wooden  buildings  were  marked 
for  demolition  ;  and  hatchet  and  crow-bar  were  steadily 
plied  until  the  arrival  of  a  fleet  of  colliers  from  the 
Northern  English  ports  spared  Boston  any  further  taste 
of  the  destiny  which  had  overtaken  her  humble  neigh- 
bour beyond  the  ferry. 

It  was  sad  work  at  the  best ;  and  all  the  more  hate- 
ful to  Bostonians  because  it  afforded  a  pretext  for 
mortifying  the  richer   members  of  the  popular  party 

1  Curwen" 's  Journal ;  Feb.  15,  1776. 


352  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

whose  circumstances  had  enabled  them  to  leave  the 
town,  and  those  poorer  patriots  who  had  no  choice  but 
to  stay  there.  A  fine  old  elm,  which  went  by  the  name 
of  Liberty  Tree,  had  during  ten  years  served  the  public 
as  a  rallying  place  for  political  gatherings.  Fourteen 
cords  of  firewood  were  now  obtained  from  the  ven- 
erable trunk.  Sons  of  Liberty,  all  the  continent  over, 
consoled  themselves  by  knowing,  or  at  all  events  by 
believing,  that  a  soldier  had  met  his  death  in  falling 
from  the  branches  while  engaged  upon  what  they 
regarded  as  an  act  of  sacrilege.1  It  was  perhaps  too 
much  to  expect  that  the  notorious  tree  would  be  spared 
in  the  hour  of  retribution  by  redcoats  who  had  so 
often  been  roundly  abused  beneath  its  spreading  foli- 
age. But  worse  things  were  done  with  far  less  excuse. 
The  old  North  Chapel  had  stood  for  a  hundred  years, 
and,  relatively  to  the  duration  of  the  city,  was  as  much 
a  piece  of  antiquity  as  St.  Albans  Abbey  or  Beverley 
Minster.  It  was  now  taken  down  and  sent  in  smoke, 
with  all  its  memories  and  associations,  up  the  chimneys 
of  a  hundred  barrack-rooms.  The  steeple  of  the  West 
Church,  built  of  large  timbers,  underwent  the  same  fate. 
Little  love  was  lost  between  the  British  authorities 

1  The  catastrophe  was  celebrated  in  the  kind  of  verses  which  some- 
body at  all  times  can  be  found  to  write,  and  which,  during  a  period  of 
national  excitement,  even  sensible  men  contrive  to  read. 

"  Each,  axe  in  hand,  attacked  the  honoured  tree, 
Swearing  eternal  war  with  Liberty. 
But  e'er  it  fell,  not  mindless  of  its  wrong, 
Avenged  it  took  one  destined  head  along. 
A  Tory  soldier  on  its  topmost  limb,  — 
The  genius  of  the  shade  looked  stern  at  him, 
And  marked  him  out  that  self-same  hour  to  dine 
Where  unsnuffed  lamps  burn  low  at  Pluto's  shrine." 

There  were  smaller  Liberty  Trees  in  other  quarters  of  the  city.  On 
May  4,  1766,  John  Adams  wrote  :  — 

"  Sunday.  Returning  from  meeting  this  morning  I  saw  for  the  first 
time  a  likely  young  button-wood  tree,  lately  planted  on  a  triangle  made 
by  three  roads.  The  tree  is  well  set,  well  guarded,  and  has  on  it  an 
inscription, 

*  The  tree  of  Liberty,  and  cursed  is  he  who  cuts  this  tree  ! ' 
What  will  be  the  consequences  of  this  thought  ?     I  hear  that  some  per- 
sons grumble,  and  threaten  to  girdle  it." 


THE   GARRISON  353 

and  the  minister  and  deacons  of  the  old  South  Chapel, 
which  had  been  frequently  lent  to  the  patriots  for  town- 
meetings.  The  parsonage  was  destroyed,  mercifully 
and  at  once;  but  the  church  was  treated  as  too  bad 
for  burning.  The  nave  was  made  over  to  the  cavalry 
as  a  place  in  which  to  exercise  their  horses.  Pulpit 
and  seats  were  cut  in  pieces.  Earth  and  gravel  were 
spread  over  the  floor ;  a  leaping-bar  was  set  up ;  the 
gallery  was  fitted  as  a  refreshment  room  for  spectators ; 
and  the  stoves  were  fed  with  the  contents  of  a  library, 
the  pride  of  the  connection  to  whom  the  chapel  be- 
longed. The  responsibility  for  this  desecration,  justly 
or  unjustly,  was  laid  at  the  doors  of  General  Burgoyne. 
He  had  offended  a  people  with  quick  tongues  and  long 
memories.  Two  years  afterwards,  when  he  entered 
Boston  as  a  prisoner,  he  called  the  attention  of  his 
staff  to  a  public  building  beneath  which  they  were 
passing,  as  having  been  formerly  the  residence  of  the 
Governor.  A  voice  in  the  crowd  quietly  observed  that, 
when  they  got  round  the  next  corner,  they  would  see 
the  Riding-school.  Burgoyne  took  that  remark  like 
a  man  who  loved  a  jest ;  but  he  subsequently  confessed 
that  at  another  point  of  his  route  he  had  been  for  a 
moment  disconcerted  by  learning  that  the  first  sentence 
which  he  was  known  to  have  uttered  after  reaching 
America  had  not  yet  been  forgotten.  As  the  procession 
filed  with  difficulty  through  the  ranks  of  a  populace 
good-humoured,  but  obtrusively  curious,  an  old  lady 
called  out  from  the  top  of  a  shed  :  "  Make  way  !  Make 
way  !     Give  the  General  elbow-room  !  " 

It  was  a  miserable  life  inside  Boston  for  troops  who 
had  sailed  from  England  in  the  belief  that  they  were  to 
take  part  in  a  triumphant  and  leisurely  progress  through 
a  series  of  rich  and  repentant  provinces.  The  horses 
soon  became  useless  from  want  of  food ;  a  circumstance 
always  predominant  among  the  material  causes  which 
destroy  the  efficiency  of  a  blockaded  army.  Moral 
deterioration  began  to  be  observed  among  the  soldiers, 
whose  spring  and  energy  were  slowly  and  stealthily  un- 

2A 


354  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

dermined  by  the  depressing  character  of  the  existence 
which  they  were  condemned  to  lead.  No  one  could 
show  himself  outside  the  earthworks  without  having  a 
bullet  through  him ;  and  the  men  on  guard  within  them 
carried  their  lives  in  their  hand  at  every  moment. 
Generals  bred  in  the  traditions  of  European  warfare 
complained  of  the  proceedings  of  the  colonists  as  un- 
generous and  unprofessional.  In  July  and  August  the 
Southern  riflemen  marched  into  Washington's  camp,  — 
stout  hardy  men,  in  white  frocks  and  round  hats,  —  who 
had  trudged  four,  five,  or  even  seven  hundred  miles  to 
have  a  shot  at  the  regulars ;  and  who  were  determined 
not  to  be  baulked  of  it  however  much  Prince  Ferdinand 
and  Marshal  de  Contades,  many  years  back  and  thou- 
sands of  miles  away,  would  have  been  shocked  at  such 
a  departure  from  the  honourable  amenities  of  a  cam- 
paign. On  the  way  North  they  had  shown  off  their 
skill  at  a  review.  One  of  their  companies,  while  ad- 
vancing in  skirmishing  order,  had  put  a  good  propor- 
tion of  balls  into  a  mark  seven  inches  broad  at  a 
distance  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  yards.  They  now 
posted  themselves  in  ambush,  five  or  six  of  them  behind 
as  many  neighbouring  trees,  and  watched  for  a  favour- 
able chance  at  a  British  sentry  as  they  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  wait  upon  the  movements  of  a  deer  in  the 
forests  of  South  Carolina. 

Cooped  up  within  two  promontories,  which  were  like 
small  islands  without  the  security  of  an  insular  position, 
our  soldiers  lost  their  health  and  spirits,  and  after  a 
while  something  of  their  self-respect.  Scurvy  showed 
itself.  Smallpox  raged  in  the  streets  and  cantonments ; 
and  the  British  commanders  were  of  opinion  that  Wash- 
ington, on  that  ground  alone,  even  if  he  had  not  still 
better  reasons,  would  think  twice  and  thrice  before  he 
should  assault  the  town.  When  winter  was  half  over 
the  rank  and  file  no  longer  retained  the  smart  appear- 
ance which  was  then,  even  more  than  now,  the  delight 
of  regimental  officers.  Hats  without  binding,  and  shirts 
without  frills ;    unpowdered  hair,  unwashed  linen,  and 


THE    GARRISON  355 

unbuttoned  gaiters,  formed  the  subject  of  denunciation 
in  General  Orders.  And  that  nothing  might  be  wanting, 
some  of  the  privates  went  so  far  as  to  borrow  from  the 
enemy  that  habit  which  was  the  least  worthy  of  imita- 
tion, and  chewed  tobacco  when  they  came  on  duty. 
The  British  Commander-in-Chief  was  far  from  indiffer- 
ent to  these  deviations  from  the  recognised  standard 
of  military  perfection ;  and  he  was  stern  and  inflexible 
when  the  demoralisation,  of  which  they  were  the  symp- 
toms, took  the  shape  of  violence  and  spoliation  directed 
against  the  inhabitants  of  the  city.  Subordination  was 
preserved,  and  crime  kept  in  check,  by  that  form  of 
punishment  which  had  become  so  much  of  an  institu- 
tion in  our  fighting  services  that  officers,  who  otherwise 
were  neither  unjust  nor  unkindly,  altogether  lost  sight 
of  the  distinction  between  severity  and  barbarity.  Sen- 
tences were  passed,  and  carried  out,  of  four  hundred, 
six  hundred,  one  thousand  lashes. 

There  was  one  General  in  Boston  who  viewed  these 
excesses  of  rigour  with  disapprobation.  Burgoyne  held 
that  harshness  was  seldom  required  for  the  government 
of  men  who  were  habitually  treated  by  their  superiors 
with  discrimination  and  sympathy.  He  hated  flogging. 
Wherever  he  commanded,  he  exercised  his  artistic  in- 
genuity in  order  to  find  a  substitute  for  that  penalty ; 
and  when,  according  to  the  ideas  of  the  time,  it  could 
not  be  dispensed  with,  he  took  care  that  it  was  inflicted 
in  a  measure  carefully  regulated  by  the  gravity  of  the 
offence.  A  splendid  disciplinarian  of  the  right  sort,  he 
kept  his  officers  in  order,  and  they  liked  him  all  the 
better  for  it.  He  had  learned  by  experience  that  that 
was  the  surest  method  of  keeping  order  among  the 
privates.  According  to  Burgoyne,  the  captain  and  the 
subalterns  between  them  should  be  acquainted  with 
the  disposition  and  the  merits  of  every  man  in  the 
company,  and  were  not  to  be  contented  with  noting 
down  his  height,  the  girth  of  his  chest,  and  the  number 
of  times  his  name  had  appeared  on  the  defaulters'  list. 
"To  succeed,"  he  said,  "where  minds  are  to  be  wrought 


356  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

upon  requires  both  discernment  and  labour.  Admitting 
that  English  soldiers  are  to  be  treated  as  thinking 
beings,  the  reason  will  appear  of  getting  insight  into 
the  character  of  each  particular  man,  and  proportioning 
accordingly  the  degrees  of  punishment  and  encourage- 
ment."1 

Burgoyne  now  did  his  best  to  divert  the  monotony  of 
the  siege,  and  to  show  the  troops  that,  since  good  vict- 
uals had  run  short,  their  superiors  were  all  the  more 
anxious  to  cater  for  their  amusement.  Faneuil  Hall, 
where  the  people  had  assembled  both  after  the  Boston 
Massacre,  and  before  the  destruction  of  the  tea,  was 
converted  into  a  theatre.  The  idea  of  turning  the 
cradle  of  liberty  to  such  a  use  did  not  escape  censorious 
comment ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  Boston  was 
a  city  where  it  was  not  easy  to  find  any  capacious 
building,  sacred  or  profane,  in  which  a  political  meeting 
had  never  been  held.  The  company  gave  the  tragedy 
of  Tamerlane ;  some  modern  comedies ;  and  a  piece  of 
occasion  entitled  the  Blockade,  in  which  the  person  of 
Washington  was  caricatured  with  a  flippancy  which  the 
course  of  events  soon  rendered  unfashionable  even 
among  his  adversaries.  Burgoyne  contributed  a  pro- 
logue, spoken  by  a  very  young  nobleman  who  had  dis- 
tinguished himself  on  the  seventeenth  of  June.  "  Lord 
Rawdon,"  said  Burgoyne,  "  behaved  to  a  charm.  His 
name  is  established  for  life."  That  life  was  long,  and 
so  varied  and  stirring  that  it  reads  like  the  story  of  as 
many  separate  men  as  the  three  names  by  which  he 
who  lived  it  was  successively  called.  Always  to  the 
front  in  a  fight,  and  the  last  in  a  retreat,  Lord  Rawdon 
proved  himself  a  brilliant  and  successful  partisan  leader 
in  the  war  which  now  was  opening.  As  Lord  Moira  he 
was  an  orator  for  many  a  long  year  at  Westminster, 

1  Burgoyne,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  had  an  able  biographer  in  the  late 
Mr.  Edward  Barrington  de  Fonblanque.  Mr.  de  Fonblanque  was  in  our 
own  days  a  wise,  perfectly  informed,  and  (for  he  was  a  permanent  official 
in  the  War  Department)  a  singularly  courageous  military  reformer.  He 
wrote  quite  as  well  as  might  be  expected  from  a  nephew  of  the  famous 
editor  of  the  "  Examiner." 


THE    GARRISON  357 

and  in  the  House  of  Peers  of  Ireland,  as  long  as  Ireland 
had  one ;  a  prominent  and  a  popular  statesman,  and  a 
good  friend  of  Fox  and  of  liberty,  at  a  time  when  they 
both  wanted  friends  badly.  And  far  into  the  next  cen- 
tury, as  a  Governor-General  too  old  to  lead  his  own 
armies,  Lord  Hastings  organised  conquest  on  a  scale 
which  dazzled  his  countrymen,  and  terrified  his  em- 
ployers on  the  board  of  the  East  India  Company.  After 
he  had  taught  a  lesson  to  Nepaul,  and  had  finally  and 
effectually  broken  the  power  of  the  Mahrattas,  —  per- 
haps the  greatest  single  service  which  our  rule  has 
conferred  on  our  Eastern  dependency,  —  it  may  well  be 
believed  that  he  but  dimly  remembered  what  his  sensa- 
tions were  when  he  found  himself  on  the  right  side  of 
the  breastwork  at  Bunker's  Hill,  with  two  bullet  holes 
in  his  hat,  and  his  reputation  made. 

George  the  Third  was  not  long  in  showing  what  he 
considered  to  be  the  practical  value  of  the  victory  which 
his  troops  had  gained.  As  soon  as  the  news  reached 
Kew  he  at  once  desired  that  General  Gage  should  turn 
over  the  command  to  Howe,  and  sail  for  England  in 
order  to  inform  the  Ministry  as  to  what  supplies  and 
reinforcements  the  army  wanted  for  carrying  on  the 
next  campaign.  It  was  a  kindly  pretext,  devised  to 
spare  the  feelings  of  an  unprofitable  but  a  faithful  and  a 
brave  servant.1  In  recalling  that  ill-starred  commander, 
the  King  acted  on  his  own  first  and  most  just  impres- 
sions. He  made  up  his  mind  without  waiting  to  read  a 
letter  containing  Burgoyne's  enumeration  of  the  points 
wherein  Gage  failed  to  resemble  Julius  Caesar,  especially 
in  the  wise  munificence  with  which  the  great  Roman 
dispensed  public  money  to  his  deserving  lieutenants. 
Burgoyne  himself  went  home  in  November,  having 
been  summoned  back  by  royal  command  because  his 
advice  was  really  wanted.  Before,  however,  the  two 
Generals  departed  from  Boston  they  were  engaged  on 
one  more  joint  literary  undertaking.     Washington  had 

1  Not  very  long  ago  a  gold  medal,  presented  to  Gage  by  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland  after  Culloden,  was  sold  at  auction  for  230/. 


353  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

addressed  to  the  British  Commander-in-Chief  a  remon- 
strance against  the  denial  to  American  officers,  who  had 
been  taken  prisoners,  of  the  privileges  and  alleviations 
due  to  their  rank.  Gage's  reply  was  worded  by  Bur- 
goyne.  "Britons,"  he  wrote,  "  ever  pre-eminent  in 
mercy,  have  overlooked  the  criminal  in  the  captive. 
Your  prisoners,  whose  lives  by  the  law  of  the  land  are 
destined  to  the  cord,  have  hitherto  been  treated  with 
care  and  kindness ;  —  indiscriminately  it  is  true,  for  I 
acknowledge  no  rank  that  is  not  derived  from  the  King." 
The  author  might  well  have  stopped  here ;  but  the  op- 
portunity was  irresistible,  and  he  proceeded  to  inflict 
upon  Washington,  as  a  person  only  too  likely  to  need 
it,  a  lecture  on  the  obligation  of  scrupulous  truthfulness. 
When  the  rough  copy  had  been  fairly  written  out,  the 
letter  was  addressed  to  George  Washington,  Esquire ; 
and  the  notoriety  obtained  by  this  superscription  is  the 
cause  that  the  effusion  itself,  unfortunately  for  Bur- 
goyne,  has  been  more  read  than  all  his  dramas  and  epi- 
logues together. 

The  authorities  in  England  had  not  foreseen  the  pri- 
vations which  our  troops  in  Boston  were  so  early  called 
upon  to  endure.  It  was  difficult  to  understand  that  the 
army  of  a  great  sea-power,  strongly  established  in  a  sea- 
port town,  would  at  the  very  commencement  of  hostili- 
ties be  faring  no  better  than  the  sailors  on  board  an 
ill-found  East  Indiaman  in  the  last  days  of  a  long 
voyage.  The  crops  and  live-stock,  on  the  islands  alone, 
might  have  been  counted  upon  to  stave  off  scurvy  until 
such  time  as  the  harbour  was  crowded  with  provision- 
ships  attracted  from  far  and  near  by  the  prospect  of  a 
splendid  market.  But  on  her  own  element  Great  Britain 
was  poorly  served ;  and,  in  a  species  of  warfare  where 
personal  qualities  went  for  everything,  the  skill,  the  en- 
ergy, and  the  daring  were  to  a  preponderating  degree  on 
the  side  of  the  insurgents.  On  the  fifteenth  of  July  the 
colonels  of  American  regiments  were  directed  to  report 
the  names  of  men  in  their  respective  corps  who  were 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  359 

expert  in  the  management  of  whaleboats.1  The  House 
of  Commons  which,  in  spite  of  all  that  Charles  Fox 
could  say,  had  insisted  on  driving  New  England  fisher- 
men from  the  prosecution  of  their  calling,  had  made  it 
certain  that  the  list  of  the  volunteers  would  in  every 
case  be  a  long  one.  A  large  fleet  of  these  boats  had 
already  been  brought  overland  from  Cape  Cod,  and  from 
the  towns  lying  between  that  point  and  Boston.  The 
vessels  were  fitted  out  in  the  Cambridge  and  the  Mystic 
rivers,  and  before  another  week  was  over  they  were 
busy  in  the  bay.  Thenceforward  the  men  in  the  garri- 
son got  no  fresh  food,  and  the  horses  neither  fresh  nor 
dry.  The  colonists  seized  what  remained  of  the  flocks 
and  herds.  They  cut  the  standing  grass,  and  loaded  up 
their  barges  from  the  hay-ricks.  They  came  off  the 
best  in  their  encounters  with  the  British  soldier,  who 
could  do  himself  little  justice  in  operations  for  which 
he  had  not  been  trained ;  and  in  which,  as  he  com- 
plained, assistance  and  guidance  did  not  come  from 
the  quarter  where  he  had  a  right  to  look  for  them. 
"The  Admiral,"  so  a  General  wrote,  "must  take  to  him- 
self a  great  share  of  our  inactivity,  our  disgrace,  and  our 
distress.  The  glaring  facts  are  not  to  be  concealed ; 
that  many  vessels  have  been  taken,  officers  killed,  men 
made  prisoners ;  that  large  numbers  of  swift  boats  have 
been  supplied  to  the  enemy,  in  which  they  have  insulted 
and  plundered  islands  immediately  under  the  protection 
of  our  ships,  and  at  noonday  landed  in  force  and  set  fire 
to  the  light-house  almost  under  the  guns  of  two  or  three 
men  of  war." 

For  the  British  squadron  was  not  efficient.  It  had 
been  put  in  commission,  and  despatched  to  America, 
under  an  impression  that  its  duties  would  be  confined 
to  warning  merchantmen  not  to  enter  the  harbour  of 
Boston,  and  to  intimidating  the  idle  and  famished  mari- 
ners who  crowded  her  quays  by  the  rows  of  cannon 
which  protruded  from  its  portholes.     Too  few  sloops 

1  American  Archives,  Writings  of  George  Washington,  vol.  iii.,  Appen- 
dix X. 


360  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  gun-boats  had  been  provided ;  and  the  crews  both 
of  large  ships  and  small  were  on  a  peace  establishment 
which,  (before  the  days  of  Continuous  Service,)  fell 
much  below  the  complements  carried  in  time  of  war. 
The  belief  that  America  would  take  her  punishment 
submissively  was  an  article  of  the  Ministerial  creed 
which  no  one  at  the  Board  of  Admiralty  ventured  to 
dispute.  As  one  very  serious  consequence  of  that  de- 
lusion, the  fleet,  and  not  a  few  of  the  vessels  composing 
it,  were  indifferently  commanded.  Unaware  that  he 
had  already  to  deal  with  an  active  and  amphibious  rebel- 
lion, and  that  several  great  wars  were  in  the  near  future, 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich  gave  full  scope  to  private  and  po- 
litical favouritism  in  his  management  of  the  Service  for 
whose  condition,  and  in  no  small  degree  for  whose 
honour,  he  was  responsible.  Clever  and  industrious,  he 
had  the  Navy  List  by  heart ;  and  he  knew  the  opinions, 
and  the  family  and  social  connections,  of  his  Admirals 
and  Post-Captains  as  familiarly  and  thoroughly  as  ever 
Mr.  John  Robinson  knew  his  Members  of  Parliament. 
Eminent  officers,  who  held  with  Rockingham,  were  not 
in  request  at  Whitehall ;  and  there  was  a  still  blacker 
mark  against  the  names  of  those  veterans  who  had  illus- 
trated by  their  achievements  the  Ministry  of  Lord  Chat- 
ham, and  who  repaid  his  gratitude  and  esteem  with  a 
personal  loyalty  which  cost  them  dear.1 

Their  place  was  taken  by  men  of  a  much  lower  order ; 
among  whom  the  two  flag  officers  successively  appointed 
to  the  American  station  were  conspicuous,  the  one  by 
his  insolence  and  indiscretion,  and  the  other  by  his  in- 
competency. Admiral  Montagu  had  done  a  great  deal 
to  provoke  the  rebellion,  and  Admiral  Graves  did  noth- 
ing whatever  to  quell  it.  "  It  may  be  asked  in  England," 
said  Burgoyne,  "  what  is  the  admiral  doing  ?  I  wish  I 
were  able  to  answer  that  question  satisfactorily ;  but  I 

1  Captain  Mahan,  in  his  account  of  the  operations  at  sea  between  1775 
and  1783,  remarks  that,  with  the  notable  exception  of  Rodney,  almost  all 
the  distinguished  admirals  of  the  time  were  Whigs,  —  "a  fact  unfortunate 
for  the  naval  power  of  England." 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  36 1 

can  only  say  what  he  is  not  doing."  The  array  of  in- 
stances by  which  charges  of  procrastination,  want  of 
spirit,  and  professional  incapacity  were  supported  would 
have  been  formidable  in  the  hands  of  any  accuser ;  and, 
as  unfolded  by  Burgoyne,  the  indictment  was  as  porten- 
tous in  length  as  it  was  damning  in  force  and  accuracy.1 
But  nothing  that  was  done  or  neglected  in  American 
waters  had  escaped  the  eye  of  a  master  who  never  par- 
doned slackness  in  himself  or  others.  "  I  do  think  the 
Admiral's  removal  as  necessary,  if  what  is  reported  is 
founded,  as  the  mild  General's."  So  the  King  wrote 
to  Lord  North  in  the  summer ;  and,  before  the  winter 
was  through,  Graves  had  been  deprived  of  his  com- 
mand. He  was  preceded  to  England  by  the  news,  or 
it  may  be  the  rumour,  of  the  only  bit  of  fighting  in  which 
he  was  personally  engaged,  —  a  scuffle  in  the  streets  of 
Boston  with  an  official  of  the  revenue.  He  considered 
himself  to  have  been  badly  treated  by  the  Government, 
and  evinced  his  resentment  in  a  manner  which  was 
honourable  to  him.  Having  refused  a  lucrative  post 
on  shore,  he  passed  the  short  remainder  of  his  days  in 
a  retirement  which  he  made  it  to  be  understood  that 
nothing  except  a  call  to  active  service  would  induce 
him  to  quit.2 

Before  the  Admiral  received  his  letter  of  recall  the 
mischief  was  already  done.  The  colonists  had  not 
been  slow  to  catch  at  an  opportunity  when  the  inter- 
ests of  Great  Britain  were  entrusted  to  a  squadron 
which  was  ill  provided  and  worse  commanded ;  and  the 
American  navy  came  into  being  during  the  second  half 

1  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Burgoyne,  by  F.  B.  de  Fonblanque;  pp. 
197,  198. 

2  Popular  report  made  out  Graves  to  be  absurd  as  well  as  unsuccessful; 
for  the  opposite  of  a  hero,  like  a  hero,  is  usually  something  of  a  mythical 
personage.  It  has  been  related  in  print  how,  on  his  elevation  to  the  peer- 
age, he  chose  a  Latin  motto  to  the  effect  that  an  eagle  does  not  stoop  to 
flies;  and  how  the  wags  translated  it  as  meaning  that  a  Vice  Admiral  need 
not  concern  himself  with  whaleboats.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  peerage  was 
bestowed  not  on  Samuel  Graves,  but  on  Thomas  Graves,  who  earned  it 
gloriously  on  the  First  of  June,  and  who  was  always  ready  for  anything 
which  came  in  his  way,  from  a  longboat  to  a  couple  of  three-deckers. 


362  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  the  year  1772.  The  first  vessels  sailed  beneath  the 
pine-tree  flag.  The  emblem  was  appropriately  chosen  ; 
because  the  service,  which  fought  its  earliest  battles 
under  that  ensign,  struck  its  own  roots  and  grew  up  of 
itself.  In  every  colony  (since  all  touched  the  ocean 
somewhere)  there  were  shipowners  whose  whalers  and 
coasters  were  laid  up  in  harbour ;  merchants  whose 
capital  was  producing  nothing ;  whole  villages  of  sea- 
faring people  with  their  occupation  gone.  Rhode 
Island  had  two  cruisers  afloat  in  July,  and  on  the  first 
of  the  same  month  the  Assembly  of  Connecticut  author- 
ised the  equipment  of  two  others.  The  Congressmen 
of  Massachusetts  had  been  the  first  to  recognise  the 
necessity  of  a  fleet ;  but  Bunker's  Hill  diverted  their 
attention  to  the  war  on  land,  and  the  subject  was 
allowed  to  sleep.  Soon,  however,  the  hand  of  the 
Provincial  authorities  was  forced  by  individuals  who 
put  to  sea  without  letters  of  marque ;  and  who,  while 
the  enemy  classed  them  as  pirates,  had  not  the  status 
of  privateers  even  in  the  eyes  of  their  own  Government. 
Moved  by  the  danger  to  their  necks  which  these  advent- 
urous patriots  had  cheerfully  incurred,  the  Assembly 
at  Concord  hastened  to  legalise  the  employment  of 
armed  ships,  and  proceeded  to  establish  a  Court  for 
the  trial  and  condemnation  of  prizes. 

The  prime  mover  in  the  creation  of  a  national  ma- 
rine was  the  man  most  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
broad  aspects  of  the  military  position,  and  most  deeply 
concerned  in  the  issue.  Washington,  outstepping  the 
attributes  of  his  office  in  substance,  but  careful  to 
observe  them  in  form,  directed  "  a  captain  in  the  army 
of  the  united  colonies  of  North  America  to  take  com- 
mand of  a  detachment  of  the  said  army,  and  proceed 
on  board  the  schooner  Hannah  at  Beverley.  " 2  The 
Congress  at  Philadelphia  was  not  in  a  mood  to  get  up 
a  quarrel  with  their  General  for  exceeding  his  powers. 
Urged   by  his  importunity,  and  fired   by  his  example, 

1  The  Writings  of  George  Washington,  vol.  iii.,  Appendix  X. 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  363 

they  armed  and  manned  six  schooners,  which  by  the 
end  of  October  were  chasing  and  being  chased  in  and 
about  Massachusetts  Bay.  A  permanent  Committee, 
with  John  Adams  upon  it,  was  appointed  for  the  super- 
vision of  naval  affairs ;  a  code  of  regulations  was  drawn 
up  and  issued  to  the  squadron  ;  and  skippers  and  mates 
in  sufficient  number  were  duly  commissioned  as  Cap- 
tains and  Lieutenants  of  the  Continental  Navy.  Wash- 
ington, however,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  continued 
to  act  as  Admiral,  until  Captain  Manly  of  the  Lee  by 
the  audacity  of  his  enterprises  was  marked  out  to  the 
judgment  of  America  for  her  first  Commodore. 

It  was  evident  from  a  very  early  date  that  the  new 
sea-power  had  an  instinctive  grasp  of  the  good  old 
methods.  The  American  commanders  were  fully  alive 
to  the  truth  of  the  famous  proverb  which  passes  as  the 
last  word  of  military  wisdom,  though  it  is  not  certain  to 
which  of  the  world's  great  warriors  the  original  invention 
of  it  should  be  attributed.  They  knew  that  in  order 
to  make  omelettes  eggs  must  be  broken,  and  that  a  cap- 
tain cannot  hope  to  bring  his  adversary's  ship  into  port 
unless  he  will  run  the  risk  of  losing  his  own.  A  rapid 
series  of  successes,  chequered  by  disaster,  formed  a 
worthy  commencement  to  the  history  of  a  navy  which 
has  always  done  an  amount  of  fighting  quite  extraordi- 
nary in  proportion  to  the  national  money  that  has  been 
spent  upon  it.  The  public  in  London,  when  it  cared  to 
visit  the  Admiralty,  was  very  soon  treated  to  a  look  at  a 
captured  pine-tree  flag ;  and  on  the  other  hand  Manly 
alone,  to  say  nothing  of  his  consorts,  in  the  course  of 
four  months  intercepted  stores  sufficient  to  have  vict- 
ualled his  squadron  many  times  over,  and  almost  enough 
liquor  to  float  his  little  flagship.  A  vessel  laden  with  a 
hundred  butts  of  porter ;  a  brigantine  whose  cargo  in- 
cluded a  hundred  and  thirty-nine  hogsheads  of  rum,  and 
a  hundred  cases  of  right  Geneva ;  a  sloop  with  Indian 
corn,  potatoes,  and  oats ;  two  Whitehaven  ships  with 
coal  and  potatoes;  two  large  merchantmen  carrying 
provisions  for  the  British  garrison,  —  these  were  some, 


364  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  by  no  means  the  most  valuable,  of  the  Commodore's 
prizes. 

When  the  condition  of  the  besieged  troops  became 
known  in  England,  the  Ministry  endeavoured  to  supply 
their  wants  by  means  of  a  profuse  expenditure.  Five 
thousand  oxen  (so  it  was  computed  by  a  very  well-in- 
formed writer),  fourteen  thousand  of  the  largest  and 
fattest  sheep,  and  a  huge  consignment  of  hogs  were 
purchased,  and  sent  out  alive.  Vegetables  of  all  kinds 
were  cured  by  a  new  process,  and  stowed  away  in  the 
holds.  Five  thousand  caldrons  of  coal  were  shipped, 
along  with  the  very  faggots  required  to  kindle  them ; 
oats,  beans,  and  hay  for  the  horses ;  and  near  half  a 
million  of  money  in  Spanish  and  Portuguese  coinage. 
The  employment  given  in  many  and  diverse  quarters  by 
this  feverish  activity ;  the  shares  in  lucrative  contracts 
allotted  to  men  of  rank  and  fashion,  ignorant  of  busi- 
ness, who  had  never  before  in  their  lives  sold  anything 
except  their  votes  in  Parliament ;  the  fervent  and  ex- 
pectant gratitude  of  brewers  who  supplied  ten  thousand 
butts  of  strong  beer,  and  of  merchants  who  provided 
shipping  at  a  fourth  above  the  usual  rate  for  tonnage ; 
—  all  these  circumstances  added  political  strength  to 
the  Government.  But  at  that  point  the  public  advan- 
tage stopped.  The  transports  sailed  too  late  in  the 
season,  and  contrary  gales  kept  them  long  near  our 
own  shores.  The  preserved  vegetables  fermented  and 
were  thrown  overboard.  The  waves  were  so  tempestu- 
ous that  the  greater  part  of  the  animals  perished,  and 
the  tides  carried  their  carcasses  in  thousands  up  and 
down  the  Channel.  As  the  vessels  neared  their  desti- 
nation, the  periodical  winds  set  in  and  blew  full  in  their 
teeth.  Some  were  driven  off  to  the  West  Indian 
Islands.  Others  drifted  towards  the  American  coasts, 
and  were  boarded  and  plundered  in  the  creeks  to  which 
they  resorted  for  shelter.  Those  which  survived,  after 
beating  the  seas  for  three  or  four  months,  found  them- 
selves, with  leaking  sides  and  rotten  cordage,  on  the 
cruising  ground  of   a  hostile  navy  the  first   notice  of 


NAVAL   OPERATIONS  365 

whose  existence  reached  them  through  a  shot  fired 
across  their  own  bows.  Time,  and  no  very  long  time, 
had  brought  about  the  due  revenges ;  and  Boston  had 
become  a  closed  port  in  a  sense  which  Parliament  never 
contemplated  or  intended.1 

The  supineness  of  the  British  naval  commanders 
during  the  first  period  of  the  war  was  less  detrimental 
to  the  royal  cause  than  their  occasional  ebullitions  of 
sinister  energy.  On  the  fifteenth  of  October,  1775, 
George  the  Third  assured  Lord  North,  in  a  sentence 
never  yet  forgotten  beyond  the  Atlantic,  that  he  would 
concur  in  any  plan  which  could  be  devised  with  the 
object  of  "  distressing  America."  A  week  afterwards 
a  despatch  went  from  Downing  Street  recommending 
that  the.rebels  should  be  annoyed  by  sudden  and  un- 
expected attacks  of  their  seaboard  towns  during  the 
winter ;  and  directing  the  total  destruction  of  any  place, 
"large  or  small,  in  which  the  people  assembled  in  arms, 
or  held  meetings  of  committees  or  congresses.  Charles 
the  First,  who  has  sometimes  been  called  a  tyrant,  but 
who  fought  his  civil  war  as  became  an  English  King, 
would  on  these  grounds  have  been  justified  in  utterly 
demolishing  Bristol  and  Leicester,  and  (if  he  once  could 
have  got  inside  them)  Norwich,  Gloucester,  Cambridge, 
and  London  itself. 

Already  something  had  been  done  in  anticipation  of 
the  Ministerial  policy.  On  the  middle  day  of  October 
Captain  Mowatt  had  sailed  into  the  port  of  Falmouth, 
in  that  part  of  Massachusetts  which  afterwards  became 
the  state  of  Maine,  and  had  poured  a  shower  of  grenades 
arid  shells  upon  the  unprotected  streets  of  the  little 
community.  Some  wooden  houses  were  soon  in  a  blaze, 
and  Marines  were  landed  to  prevent  the  fire  from  being 
extinguished.  The  church,  the  public  buildings,  and 
three-fourths  of  the  dwellings  perished ;  all  the  vessels 
in  the  harbour  were  sunk  or  carried  off ;  and  the  inhab- 
itants were  left,  homeless   and  without  the  means  of 

1  Annual  Register  for  1776;  chapter  ii.  of  the  History  of  Europe. 


366  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

escape,  to  the  approaching  rigours  of  a  Northern  win- 
ter in  that  remote  and  (when  the  sea  was  blockaded)  all 
but  inaccessible  region.  The  members  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  were  then  waiting  for  a  reply  to  the 
Address  in  which  they  had  appealed  to  the  King  to 
stand  their  friend,  in  spite  of  the  prejudice  and  ani- 
mosity entertained  by  Parliament  against  his  subjects 
in  America.  The  tidings  from  Falmouth  reached  Phila- 
delphia on  the  same  day  as  the  news  that  the  British 
Government  was  raising  an  army  of  German  mercenaries 
to  be  employed  against  the  revolted  colonies.  These 
two  pieces  of  intelligence,  by  their  simultaneous  effect, 
killed  outright  all  hope,  or  even  desire,  of  conciliation. 
"  Brother  rebel,"  said  a  Southern  delegate  to  one  of  his 
New  England  colleagues,  "  I  am  ready  to  declare  our- 
selves independent.  We  have  now  got  a  sufficient 
answer  to  our  petition." 

The  doom  of  Falmouth  was  a  foretaste  of  what  the 
Northern  colonies  had  to  expect;  and  the  lesson  was 
next  taught  in  another  quarter.  Norfolk,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  James  River,  had  for  many  years  been  the  seat 
of  a  brisk  and  mutually  profitable  trade  with  the  West  of 
Scotland  in  the  staple  commodity  of  Virginia.  Near 
sixty  thousand  hogsheads  of  tobacco  were  annually 
brought  into  the  Clyde  ;  and  most  of  them  were  shipped 
from  the  estuary  of  the  James.  The  town  was  largely 
owned  by  merchants  whose  warehouses  lined  Virginia 
Street  in  Glasgow.  Their  clerks  and  factors  formed 
that  part  of  the  population  of  Norfolk  which  was  most 
in  evidence ;  especially  since  the  troubles  began,  and 
the  partisans  of  the  Revolution  had  retired  into  the 
interior  of  the  country.  These  good  Scotchmen,  if  left 
to  themselves,  would  have  lived  peaceably.  When 
forced  to  show  colours,  they  very  gingerly  took  up  arms 
for  the  Crown,  and  formed  themselves  into  a  Loyal 
Militia.  Before  long,  a  force  of  native  Virginians  came 
down  from  the  upper  districts,  and  re-entered  Norfolk 
after  a  sharp  encounter  with  a  small  garrison  of  regu- 
lars.    The  Loyal  Militia,  who  during  the  action  had  con- 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  367 

trived  to  post  themselves  where  the  righting  was  not, 
sought  refuge  among  the  ships  of  a  squadron  which  lay 
in  the  river,  with  Lord  Dunmore,  the  Governor  of  the 
province,  on  board.  That  nobleman,  and  the  captain  of 
the  largest  man  of  war,  laid  their  heads  together  over 
the  paper  of  Instructions  which  had  been  issued  by  the 
Government  at  home.  They  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  Norfolk  was  "  a  town  in  actual  rebellion,  accessible 
to  the  King's  ships,"  and  that  they  had  no  choice 
except  to  carry  out  the  King's  order.  Accordingly  on 
the  afternoon  of  New  Year's  day,  1776,  the  bombard- 
ment commenced.  The  pinewood  structures,  coated 
with  paint,  were  soon  alight ;  and  favoured  by  the  wind 
the  conflagration  spread  fast.  Wherever  the  Ameri- 
cans were  not  on  the  look-out,  a  boat's  crew  pushed  off 
and  set  a  match  to  the  sheds  where  the  Scotch  factors 
kept  their  stores  of  an  article  which  they  intended 
eventually  to  be  burned,  but  not  by  so  wholesale  and 
unremunerative  a  process.  Sixty  cannon,  deliberately 
trained  upon  the  points  where  the  flames  were  advanc- 
ing, defeated  every  effort  to  save  the  town ;  and  the 
fire  raged  until  four-fifths  of  the  houses  were  in  ashes. 

That  lamentable  occurrence  stirred  the  calm  temper 
of  the  most  famous  of  Virginians,  and  animated  his  pre- 
cise and  severe  style ;  for  the  Commander-in-Chief  of 
the  American  army  wrote  from  his  headquarters  at 
Cambridge  that  a  few  more  of  such  flaming  arguments 
as  those  which  were  exhibited  at  Falmouth  and  Norfolk 
would  secure  a  majority  in  favour  of  a  separation  be- 
tween England  and  her  colonies.  Franklin,  when 
Charlestown  was  shelled  and  destroyed,  had  pronounced 
himself  unable  to  discern  how  such  proceedings  could 
favourably  affect  those  commercial  claims  on  the  part 
of  the  mother-country  which  had  been  the  ostensible 
origin  of  the  war.  "Britain,"  he  said,  "must  certainly 
be  distracted.  No  tradesman  out  of  Bedlam  ever 
thought  of  increasing  the  numbers  of  his  customers  by 
knocking  them  on  the  head,  or  of  enabling  them  to  pay 
their  debts  by  burning  their  houses."     This  specimen  of 


368  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Franklin's  habitual  humour  was  fraught  with  as  grim  a 
purpose  as  that  which  inspired  Washington's  unwonted 
rhetoric.  The  glare  thrown  upon  the  future  by  these 
acts  of  official  arson  lighted  them  both  to  the  same  con- 
clusion. "  It  has  been  with  difficulty,"  Franklin  wrote, 
"  that  we  have  carried  another  humble  Petition  to  the 
Crown,  to  give  Britain  one  more  chance  of  recovering 
the  friendship  of  the  colonies :  which  however  she  has 
not  sense  enough  to  embrace,  and  so  she  has  lost  them 
for  ever." 


CHAPTER  XI 

WASHINGTON.   THE  REFUGEES.   THE  CONDUCT  AND  RE- 
SULT OF  THE  CAMPAIGN 

Washington,  meanwhile,  was  struggling  against  diffi- 
culties less  hopeless  indeed  than  those  which  beset  the 
British  General,  but  of  a  character  more  unusual  in 
modern  warfare,  and  demanding  more  exceptional  qual- 
ities in  the  man  whose  duty  it  was  to  deal  with  them. 
The  royal  garrison  was  dwindling  from  disease  and  pri- 
vation ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  the  American  army  would 
melt  away  of  itself.  Within  a  week  after  Bunker's  Hill 
there  were  many  honest  militiamen  who  thought  it  an 
eminently  suitable  occasion  to  go  back  to  their  farms, 
and  get  in  the  hay  and  possibly  the  corn  before  the  next 
battle.  One  captain  appears  to  have  been  left  with  a 
single  file  of  soldiers.  During  the  last  ten  days  of  June 
the  Massachusetts  Committee  of  Safety  informed  the 
Selectmen  of  Bradford  that  "the  whole  of  a  company 
of  fifty  men,  save  two,  have  scandalously  deserted  the 
cause  of  their  country,  and  stained  their  own  honour  by 
leaving  the  camp,  and  returning  home."  The  circum- 
stances under  which  the  troops  had  originally  assembled 
in  camp  were  such  as  to  render  it  most  unlikely  that 
they  would  be  induced  to  remain  there  through  the 
winter.  They  had  turned  out  on  the  morning  of  Lex- 
ington to  try  their  weapons  against  the  British  and  to 
run  their  chance  of  getting  a  bullet  back ;  but  the  idea 
had  never  crossed  the  minds  of  most  of  them  that  they 
were  mortgaging  their  services  for  a  whole  campaign, 
and  still  less  for  an  interminable  war.  They  had  taken 
up  arms  for  liberty ;  and  it  was  a  poor  beginning,  as  far 
2B  369 


370  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

as  their  own  share  of  that  blessing  was  concerned,  to 
find  themselves  converted  from  free  citizens  into  the 
rank  and  file  of  a  standing  army  before  their  leave  had 
been  asked,  and  without  a  single  shilling  of  bounty.  A 
British  recruit  entered  on  the  military  career  with  a 
handsome  sum  in  his  pocket,  however  short  a  time  it 
might  remain  in  that  receptacle.  Even  a  Hessian,  when 
he  put  on  the  red-coat,  had  the  satisfaction  of  reflecting 
that  his  beloved  Landgrave  was  the  richer  by  seven 
guineas  a  head  for  himself  and  each  of  his  comrades. 
But  the  American  minute-man  had  nothing  but  his  ra- 
tion, and  a  suit  of  clothes  made  of  wool  which  his  sis- 
ters had  spun.  It  was  no  wonder  that  an  invitation  to 
subscribe  the  Articles  of  War,  as  laid  down  by  the  Con- 
tinental Congress,  met  with  scanty  response.  Both 
officers  and  men  preferred  to  keep  within  the  terms 
under  which  they  had  enlisted  in  the  military  establish- 
ments of  their  several  Provinces.  The  regiments  of 
Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  stood  engaged  up  to  the 
first  of  December,  and  for  not  a  day  longer;  and  no  one 
portion  of  the  entire  force  was  bound  to  serve  into  the 
coming  year.  On  the  first  of  January,  1776,  everybody 
was  free  to  go ;  and  the  lines,  which  required  fifteen 
thousand  men  to  defend  them,  would  thenceforward  be 
manned  by  a  handful  of  volunteers  who  did  not  care  to 
survive  their  cause,  and  were  ashamed  to  abandon  their 
general. 

Washington  had  been  born  and  trained  for  precisely 
such  a  crisis.  He  had  an  aversion  to  arbitrary  methods, 
a  keen  sense  of  what  was  due  to  others,  and  a  quiet  but 
comprehensive  sympathy  with  their  feelings.  He  knew 
that  his  countrymen  did  not  love  to  be  bullied,  and  were 
the  worst  people  in  the  world  to  entrap  or  to  over-reach. 
It  was  in  vain,  he  said,  to  attempt  to  reason  away  the 
prejudices  of  a  whole  army.1  Instead  of  trying  to  force 
the  Articles  of  War  on  a  reluctant  and  in  some  cases 
a  vigorously  recalcitrant  militia,  he  resolved  to  form  a 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress:  Sept.  21,  1775. 


WASHINGTON 


371 


regular  establishment  composed  of  men  who  had  ac- 
cepted those  Articles  by  choice,  and  with  their  eyes 
open.  A  Committee  of  Congress  three  in  number,  of 
whom  Franklin  was  one,  repaired  to  Cambridge  in  order 
to  confer  with  delegates  chosen  by  the  New  England 
colonies.  They  found  Washington  ready  with  a  scheme 
for  raising  twenty-six  regiments  of  soldiers  who  should 
engage  themselves  for  a  twelvemonth  certain.  He 
asked  for  twenty  thousand  infantry ;  and  the  repre- 
sentatives of  New  England  assured  him  that  he  might 
draw  thirty  thousand  from  the  Northern  provinces  alone. 
It  was  a  striking  instance  of  that  too  sanguine  Amer- 
ican temper  which  the  delays  and  rebuffs  of  war  con- 
vert, not  into  disgust  or  despair,  but  into  patience  and 
perseverance,  and  an  unalterable  determination  to  win. 
The  enrolment  of  the  new  force  began  in  the  last  week 
of  October.  At  first  the  results  were  most  discourag- 
ing. No  privates  would  enlist  in  any  corps  until  they 
knew  the  names  of  the  whole  regimental  hierarchy 
from  the  colonel  downwards;  and  when  it  came  to  the 
distribution  of  commissions,  the  aspirants  were  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  please.  Where  an  officer  was  too 
patriotic  to  be  exacting,  his  colony  was  jealous  for  him. 
At  one  time  Washington  expected  that  half  of  his  cap- 
tains and  lieutenants  would  leave  him.  His  confidential 
letters  were  couched  in  scathing  terms.  "  Such  a 
dearth  of  public  spirit,"  he  wrote,  "  and  such  want  of 
virtue  ;  such  stock-jobbing,  and  fertility  in  all  the  low 
arts  to  obtain  advantages  of  one  kind  or  another  in  this 
great  change  of  military  arrangement,  I  never  saw 
before,  and  I  pray  God's  mercy  that  I  may  never  see 
again."  In  that  atmosphere  of  intrigue  recruiting  was 
sometimes  at  a  standstill,  and  then  for  a  while  moved 
slowly  on.  The  call  of  duty  and  the  hope  of  distinc- 
tion were  there  for  whatever  they  were  worth  in  each 
man's  estimation;  but,  over  and  above  those  induce- 
ments, the  temptations  which  the  Continental  Treasury 
was  able  to  hold  forth  were  pitifully  and  almost  patheti- 
cally small.  The  donative  offered  to  the  praetorian  guards 


372  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  American  liberty  consisted  in  the  prospect  of  a  month's 
pay  in  advance,  as  soon  as  there  was  anything  in  the  mili- 
tary chest,  and  a  promise  that  at  some  period  in  the 
distant  future  they  would  be  allowed  to  buy  their  uni- 
forms at  cost  price.1  During  the  first  three  weeks,  out 
of  a  group  of  eleven  battalions  of  militia,  less  than  a 
thousand  men  had  given  in  their  names.  Four  thou- 
sand at  the  most  joined,  in  and  before  November;  and, 
when  another  month  had  elapsed,  the  whole  number  on 
the  new  establishment  was  still  below  ten  thousand,  of 
whom  one  in  every  ten  was  off  home  on  a  furlough 
which  he  had  claimed  as  a  condition  of  re-enlistment. 

That  was  the  strength  of  the  new  army  at  the  end 
of  the  year;  and  by  that  date  the  old  army  had  been 
dissolved.  "We  have  found  it,"  said  Washington,  "as 
practicable  to  stop  a  torrent  as  these  people,  when  their 
time  is  up."  And,  even  before  their  time  was  up,  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  Connecticut  Militia,  when  they 
ascertained  that  a  bounty  was  not  forthcoming,  planned 
to  march  away  in  a  body.  That  purpose  was  defeated 
by  the  firmness  of  the  General,  and  the  exertions  of 
their  own  officers ;  and  not  least  by  a  spirited  and  well- 
timed  sermon  from  the  military  chaplain  of  the  colony. 
But  no  amount  of  exhortation  or  supervision  could  pre- 
vent many  of  the  privates  belonging  to  the  corps  from 
deserting  singly  or  in  small  parties.  Washington  showed 
a  tranquil  countenance  to  the  outside  world  ;  but  beneath 
the  seal  of  a  letter  he  begged  his  most  intimate  corre- 
spondent to  imagine,  since  he  himself  was  unwilling  to 
describe,  the  situation  of  his  mind  during  that  trying 

1  A  General  Order  of  October  28,  1775  (quoted  by  Mr.  Fotheringham  in 
his  Siege  of  Boston),  recommended  to  the  non-commissioned  officers  and 
soldiers  at  next  pay  day  to  procure  themselves  underclothing,  and  not 
coats  and  waistcoats,  as  it  was  intended  that  the  new  army  should  be 
dressed  in  uniform.  "  To  effect  which  the  Congress  will  lay  in  goods  upon 
the  best  terms  they  can  be  bought  anywhere  for  ready  money,  and  will 
sell  them  to  the  soldiers  without  any  profit  ;  by  which  means  a  uniform 
will  come  cheaper  to  them  than  any  other  clothing  that  can  be  bought. 
A  number  of  tailors  will  be  immediately  set  to  work  to  make  regimentals 
for  those  brave  men  who  are  willing  at  all  hazards  to  defend  their  invalua- 
ble rights  and  privileges." 


WASHINGTON  373 

interval.  It  was  no  light  burden,  (so  he  assured  his 
friend,)  to  maintain  a  post  against  the  flower  of  the 
British  troops  for  six  months  together,  and  then  to  have 
one  army  disbanded,  and  another  to  be  raised,  in  the 
presence  of  the  enemy.  "Search,"  he  wrote,  "the  vol- 
umes of  history  through,  and  I  much  question  whether 
a  case  similar  to  ours  is  to  be  found."  1 

The  depletion  of  his  ranks  was  only  one,  and  not 
the  most  painful,  of  Washington's  manifold  perplexities. 
He  was  engaged  on  a  siege,  and  the  whole  camp  did  not 
furnish  him  with  a  single  engineer.  With  no  money  in 
hand  he  was  making  an  army  at  a  distance  of  three 
hundred  miles  by  road  from  the  seat  of  government  and 
the  treasury  ;  and  in  spite  of  his  eager  remonstrances  no 
regular  system  of  communication  had  as  yet  been  estab- 
lished between  Cambridge  and  Philadelphia.  Except 
plenty  to  eat,  his  troops  had  little  or  nothing  that  sol- 
diers wanted.  W7inter  was  coming  on  fast,  and  they  were 
not  provided  with  blankets  or  firewood.  The  Pennsyl- 
vanian  mechanics,  who  were  to  have  turned  out  muskets 
at  the  rate  of  eight  or  nine  thousand  a  month,  fell  very 
far  short  of  the  anticipations  which  ardent  patriots  had 
formed  in  the  hopeful  days  before  muskets  had  begun 
to  be  fired.  A  sentry  in  the  trenches  still  shouldered 
the  fowling  piece  which  he  had  taken  down  from  above 
the  mantel-shelf  on  the  morning  of  Lexington.  Privates 
who  left  for  home  on  furlough,  and  still  more  those  who 
went  away  for  good,  could  not  bear  to  be  parted  from 
their  guns.  The  military  authorities  at  Cambridge  would 
gladly  have  bought  in  those  guns  on  credit;  but  they 
were  not  in  a  position  to  use  compulsion  against  men 
who  still  had  owing  to  them  the  whole  of  the  pay  which 
they  had  earned.  New  recruits  for  the  most  part  came 
in  without  arms ;  and,  while  the  regiments  were  as  yet 
only  half  complete,  there  were  not  a  hundred  muskets 
in  store. 

The  moment  seemed  close  at  hand  when  it  would  no 

1  Washington  to  Reed:  Cambridge,  Jan.  4,  1776. 


374  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

longer  matter  whether  the  soldier  carried  a  gun  or  a 
pitchfork.  On  the  third  of  August  account  was  taken 
of  the  stock  of  ammunition  ;  and  the  magazine  was  so 
bare  that  Washington  wrote  off  at  once  to  beg  for  powder 
from  the  neighbouring  colonies,  assuring  them  that  no 
quantity,  however  small,  would  be  beneath  notice.  Three 
weeks  afterwards  he  detected  a  mistake  in  the  return, 
and  pronounced  the  situation  nothing  short  of  terrible. 
He  had  reckoned,  he  said,  upon  three  hundred  quarter 
casks,  and  had  but  thirty-two  barrels.  The  rains  had 
been  heavy  and  continuous,  and  the  cartridges  which 
had  already  been  served  out  were  spoiling  in  the 
pouches.  From  that  time  forwards,  under  whatever 
provocation,  the  American  batteries  were  silent ;  and 
the  powder  was  reserved  for  firing  musket  balls  at  pis- 
tol distance  in  an  emergency  which  nothing  could  post- 
pone if  once  the  plight  of  the  besiegers  became  known 
to  the  British  General.1  Under  these  circumstances 
clever  men,  who  had  seen  something  of  warfare,  began 
to  discuss  the  advisability  of  having  recourse  to  very 
primitive  instruments  of  destruction.  General  Charles 
Lee  wrote  to  Franklin  in  favour  of  enlisting  pikemen, 
and  received  a  reply  urging  him  not  to  despise  even 
bows  and  arrows.  Franklin's  arguments  in  favour  of 
that  form  of  artillery  are  excellent  reading,  and  on  paper 
unanswerable  ;  but  Washington  was  proof  against  them. 
Bows  and  arrows  were  used  with  effect  by  some  Indian 
warriors  in  the  camp  of  the  besiegers,  who  had  been 
trained  into  Christians  and  agriculturists  at  Dartmouth 
College  without  having  forgotten  how  to  lay  an  ambush  ; 
but  it  is  not  on  record  that  any  pale-face  went  into  bat- 
tle armed  with  a  weapon  more  antiquated  than  his  grand- 
father's firelock.  Pikes,  indeed,  which  had  not  gone 
altogether  out  of  fashion  among  European  military 
theorists,  were  manufactured  by  hundreds  with  a  view 
to  tide  the  American  cause  over  that  period  of  destitu- 
tion in  all  the  articles  that  made  up  the  equipment  of  a 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress,  II  November,  1775;   and 
the  retrospective  letter  of  March  31,  1776. 


WA  SHING  TON  375 

soldier.1  It  was  a  cruel  time  for  George  Washington. 
"The  reflection,"  he  wrote,  "on  my  situation,  and  that 
of  this  army,  produces  many  an  unhappy  hour  when  all 
around  me  are  wrapt  in  sleep.  I  have  often  thought 
how  much  happier  I  should  have  been  if  I  had  taken  a 
musket  on  my  shoulder,  and  entered  the  ranks ;  or,  (if  I 
could  have  justified  the  measure  to  posterity  and  my 
own  conscience,)  had  retired  to  the  back-country,  and 
lived  in  a  wigwam." 

In  this  mood,  and  in  such  straits,  he  was  tasting  the 
full  bitterness  of  the  treatment  which  every  great  com- 
mander, other  than  an  absolute  sovereign,  is  in  his  first 
campaign  called  upon  to  endure.  Patriots,  all  the  con- 
tinent over,  were  wondering  and  questioning  why  Boston 
had  not  long  ago  been  stormed ;  and  the  mouth  of  the 
one  man  who  could  tell  them  the  reason  was  closed  in 
public  by  considerations  of  which,  in  his  familiar  corre- 
spondence, he  made  no  secret.  "I  cannot  stand  justified 
to  the  world,"  so  Washington  wrote,  "without  exposing 
my  own  weakness,  and  injuring  the  cause  by  declaring 
my  wants,  which  I  am  determined  not  to  do,  farther 
than  unavoidable  necessity  brings  every  man  acquainted 
with  them.  If  I  did  not  consult  the  public  good  more 
than  my  own  tranquillity,  I  should  long  ere  this  have  put 
everything  on  the  cast  of  a  die."  The  chimney-corner 
heroes,  as  he  styled  them,  urged  him  to  begin  by  recapt- 
uring Charlestown.  But  long  before  Christmas  Bunker's 
Hill  was  an  Ehrenbreitstein  or  a  Gibraltar  by  compari- 
son with  what  it  had  been  in  the  month  of  June.     Ac- 

1  "  The  people  employed  to  make  spears  are  desired  by  the  general  to 
make  them  thirteen  feet  in  length,  and  the  wood  part  a  good  deal  more 
substantial  than  those  already  made.  Those  in  the  New  Hampshire  lines 
are  ridiculously  short  and  light."  —  American  Archives,  July  23,  1775.  In 
an  early  General  Order  Washington  desired  that  pikes  should  be  kept 
clean  and  greased. 

Major-General  Lloyd  served  several  campaigns  against  Frederic  the 
Great,  and  (a  matter  more  arduous  still)  succeeded  in  pleasing  Mr.  Car- 
lyle,  who  pronounced  him  a  writer  of  great  natural  sagacity.  Lloyd,  in 
that  section  of  his  History  of  the  Seven  Years'1  War  which  treats  of  the 
Ordering  of  a  Modern  Army,  recommended  that  one  infantry  soldier  out 
of  every  four  should  have  a  pike  in  place  of  a  musket. 


376  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

cording  to  Washington's  own  description  it  was,  both  in 
rear  and  in  front,  "by  odds  the  strongest  fortress"  of 
the  British  ;  which  one  thousand  men,  made  of  the  stuff 
that  was  behind  those  ramparts,  could  keep  against  any 
twenty  thousand.  And  in  the  American  camp  there 
were  not  half  that  number,  all  told,  under  arms ;  —  if 
such  an  expression  could  be  fairly  applied  to  troops  who 
had  nothing  with  which  to  load  their  cannon,  and  whom 
the  first  half-hour's  fight  would  leave  without  a  cartridge 
for  their  muskets. 

Criticism  was  severe  upon  Washington  in  Congress, 
in  the  newspapers,  and  above  all  in  the  taverns ;  but  he 
already  had  secured  the  confidence  and  the  loyalty  of 
those  who  immediately  surrounded  his  person.  On  the 
eighteenth  of  October  he  summoned  his  major-generals 
and  brigadiers  to  a  conference.  The  delegates  from 
Philadelphia,  who  answered  pretty  closely  to  the  cele- 
brated Representatives  on  Mission  to  the  Armies  during 
the  early  wars  of  the  French  Revolution,  had  invited 
Washington  to  say  why  an  assault  should  not  forthwith 
be  ordered.  His  own  decision  had  been  made ;  and  he 
was  well  able  to  express  it  and  to  stand  by  it.  And  yet, 
for  the  satisfaction  of  his  employers,  he  was  not  sorry 
to  fortify  that  decision  by  the  concurrence  (if  such  could 
be  obtained)  of  his  ardent  and,  in  some  cases,  very  capa- 
ble subordinates.  Charles  Lee  would  not  commit  him- 
self to  the  support  of  one  whom  he  had  the  presumption 
to  regard  as  an  over-rated  rival,  and  spoke  in  guarded 
phrases,  like  a  man  not  sufficiently  behind  the  scenes  to 
judge.  But  Ward,  Greene,  and  Putnam,  and  their  other 
colleagues,  one  and  all,  roundly  declared  that  an  attack 
on  Boston  by  open  force,  until  things  changed  greatly 
for  the  better,  could  not  even  be  contemplated  as  a  prac- 
ticable operation.  Washington,  in  addition  to  every- 
thing else,  had  his  special  troubles  with  the  provincial 
assemblies ;  whose  good-will,  in  an  army  composed  like 
his,  imported  at  least  as  much  to  him  as  that  of  the  cen- 
tral government.  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  had 
desired  him  to  send  them  back  strong  detachments  from 


WASHINGTON  377 

their  own  militia  regiments  in  order  to  protect  the  towns 
on  their  coasts  from  the  armed  vessels  of  the  enemy. 
To  this  requisition  the  Commander-in-Chief  replied  that 
the  threatened  districts  would  have  to  take  measures  for 
defending  themselves,  and  that,  if  it  came  to  the  worst, 
they  must  patiently  endure  calamities  against  which  he 
could  not  effectually  guard  them  without  sacrificing  the 
general  interests  of  the  cause.1  He  quietly  but  explicitly 
gave  it  to  be  understood  that  not  a  man  could  be  spared 
from  that  neighbourhood  where  the  great  game  was 
being  played  out  which  would  fix  the  fate,  not  of  Boston 
only,  but  of  every  fishing  hamlet  along  the  seaboard  of 
all  the  colonies. 

His  constancy  was  rewarded.  At  last  he  began  to 
reap  the  advantage  which  accrues  to  a  strategist  who, 
amidst  perils  and  anxieties  the  full  extent  of  which  is 
known  only  to  himself,  steadfastly  maintains  at  least 
the  appearance  of  an  aggressive  attitude.  New  England 
felt  proud  of  having  an  army  which  could  keep  the  field. 
The  spirit  of  her  people  was  high  and  buoyant,  and  they 
were  ready  to  perform  their  duty,  when  that  duty  was 
told  them  by  a  man  whom  they  believed.  To  fill  the 
gaps  in  his  line,  while  recruitment  for  the  Continental 
army  was  in  progress,  Washington  invited  Massachu- 
setts and  New  Hampshire  to  call  out  five  thousand  min- 
ute-men on  temporary  service.  They  came  in  great 
numbers,  and  their  behaviour  in  camp  left  nothing  to  be 
desired.  It  soon  was  evident  that  the  action  of  the 
Connecticut  militia  was  not  to  the  taste  of  their  fellow- 
citizens.  The  men,  as  they  straggled  home  in  twos  and 
threes,  met  with  a  reception  which  convinced  them  that, 
unless  they  returned  straight  away  to  their  regiment 
before  the  public  opinion  of  their  village  took  shape  in 
action,  they  would  have  to  travel  at  least  the  first  stage 
of  their  journey  to  Cambridge  by  a  mode  of  conveyance 
neither  easy  nor  dignified,  and  in  a  costume  not  unsuited 

1  Washington  to  the  Speaker  of  the  General  Assembly  of  Massachusetts 
Bay:  31  July,  1775. 


3/8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  people  who  had  chosen  to  display  the  white  feather. 
The  next  time  that  the  battalion  was  paraded,  and  the 
roll  called,  only  eighty  of  the  delinquents  were  missing. 
But  the  gallant  colony,  after  having  played  so  vigorous 
a  part  in  the  scenes  of  political  disturbance  which  ush- 
ered in  the  war,  was  not  now  contented  with  seeing  that 
a  parcel  of  unwilling  soldiers  were  sent  back  to  their 
quarters.  A  touch  of  shame  and  compunction  at  the 
thought  of  the  vexation  inflicted  by  her  unworthy  sons 
on  their  uncomplaining  General  gave  such  an  impulse 
to  the  patriotism  of  Connecticut  that  the  force  which 
she  contributed  to  Washington's  army,  from  that  moment 
onwards,  and  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  strug- 
gle, exceeded  the  contingent  furnished  by  any  province, 
except  Massachusetts  only.1  The  alacrity  of  the  New 
Hampshire  minute-men,  and  the  splendid  repentance  of 
Connecticut,  afforded  examples  which  were  not  wasted. 
The  tide  had  turned,  and  ran  in  fast.  Companies  filled 
up  with  recruits.  Older  soldiers  came  promptly  from 
furlough.  By  the  middle  of  February,  1776,  Washington 
reckoned  his  strength  at  the  full  number  of  seventeen 
thousand  fighting  men ;  and  the  best  intelligence  which 
he  could  obtain  from  inside  Boston  led  him  to  conjecture 
that  the  losses  and  privations  of  the  siege  had  reduced 
the  British  to  a  little  over  five  thousand  effective  infantry. 
The  informants  on  whom  the  General  relied  had  put 
the  hostile  force  at  too  low  a  figure ;  but  for  them,  and 
for  him  as  well,  it  was  the  hour  of  hope.  He  had  worked 
and  waited  long  with  less  than  no  encouragement ;  and 
now  everything  seemed  to  be  on  the  mend  at  once. 
The  first  gleam  of  success  had  been  the  capture  of  the 
Nancy,  a  royal  ordnance  brig  which  Captain  Manly 
brought  into  shore  at  Cape  Ann,  the  northern  point  of 
Massachusetts  Bay.  Washington,  who  knew  the  value 
of  the  prize  better  than  did  the  British  admiral,  hurried 

1In  1776  Massachusetts  sent  13,372  men  to  the  army,  Connecticut 
6,390,  Virginia  6,181,  and  Pennsylvania  5,519.  During  the  remaining 
years  of  the  war  Massachusetts  sent  38,091,  Connecticut  21,142,  Virginia 
20,491,  and  Pennsylvania  19,689. 


WASHING  TON  3  79 

off  a  strong  party  of  minute-men  to  protect  the  unlading 
of  her  cargo.  It  was  well  worth  the  trouble  ;  for  among 
the  items  were  two  thousand  muskets,  a  hundred  thou- 
sand flints,  thirty  thousand  round-shot,  and  thirty  tons 
of  bullets.  When  the  trophies  arrived  in  camp  the  most 
popular  if  not  the  most  useful  was  a  monster  mortar, 
which  Putnam,  amidst  universal  hilarity,  baptized  with 
a  bottle  of  rum ;  but  which  enjoyed  a  very  short  life 
under  its  new  name  of  the  "  Congress."  1  There  was 
no  fear  that  the  old  General  would  be  accused  of  wast- 
ing good  liquor,  for  immense  and  increasing  abundance 
reigned  throughout  the  cantonments.  The  only  differ- 
ence in  the  ration,  as  months  went  on,  was  that  the 
men  got  another  half-pound  of  meat  daily,  and  that 
their  allowance  of  vegetables  was  doubled.  Means  had 
been  discovered  to  remedy  the  scarcity  of  fuel ;  and  the 
soldiers  secured  enough  of  the  illimitable  forests  that 
clothed  the  land  to  cook  their  generous  meals,  and  to  keep 
them  warm  in  weather  which,  even  under  less  comforta- 
ble circumstances,  would  have  had  no  great  terrors  for 
a  New  Englander.  For  the  winter,  which  had  promised 
badly,  became  first  endurable  and  then  unusually  mild. 
"  The  Bay  is  open,"  a  colonial  officer  wrote  in  January. 
"  Everything  thaws  here,  except  old  Put.  He  is  still  as 
hard  as  ever,  crying  out  for  powder,  powder,  ye  Gods  give 
us  powder  !  "  And  at  last  the  powder  came.  Washing- 
ton, who  would  stoop  and  traffic  for  nothing  else,  had 
begged,  bought,  or  borrowed  a  modest  but  well  hus- 
banded stock  of  that  precious  commodity.  And,  in  the 
same  letter  which  recommended  the  use  of  bows  and 
arrows,  Franklin  reported  the  welcome  intelligence  that 
the  Secret  Committee  of  Congress,  appointed  to  provide 
the  material  of  war,  —  a  Committee  of  which  he  him- 
self was  the  life  and  soul,  —  had  contrived  to  lay  its 
hands  on  a  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  saltpetre. 

Whether  the  supply  of   powder   in    the  Cambridge 
magazine  was  small  or  large,  the  news  from  England 

1  "  Our  people  splet  the  Congress  the  third  time  that  they  fired  it." 
How^s  Diary  :  March  4,  1776. 


380  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

was  of  a  nature  to  make  it  go  off  of  itself.  On  the  first 
of  January,  1776,  a  flag  of  thirteen  stripes,  one  for  each 
colony,  was  hoisted  for  the  first  time  over  the  American 
headquarters  ;  and  on  the  same  day  copies  of  the  speech 
made  by  the  King  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  were 
distributed  broadcast  among  the  besiegers  by  the  ex- 
ertions of  the  Boston  Tories.  Those  gentlemen  antici- 
pated that  the  august  document  would  strike  panic, 
and  implant  penitence,  in  the  hardiest  breast ;  but  the 
blockade  had  already  endured  long  enough  for  them  to 
have  lost  touch  with  the  mass  of  their  countrymen. 
They  were  woefully  out  in  their  calculations.  "  We 
are  favoured,"  wrote  Washington,  "with  a  sight  of  his 
Majesty's  most  gracious  speech,  breathing  sentiments  of 
tenderness  and  compassion  for  his  deluded  American 
subjects.  We  now  know  the  ultimatum  of  British 
justice."  The  tone  of  that  manifesto  was  haughty  and 
confident ;  the  threats  were  formidable ;  and  the  Minis- 
try was  labouring  with  zeal,  and  spending  with  prodi- 
gality, in  order  to  make  the  royal  menaces  good. 

Ordinary  men,  whether  in  their  own  corner  of  a 
battle,  or  from  their  particular  post  in  the  wider  opera- 
tions of  a  war,  discern  that  which  is  immediately  to  the 
front  of  them,  and  do  not  trouble  themselves  about  what 
is  in  the  distance  or  the  future.  The  Americans  who, 
from  Prospect  Hill  and  Roxbury  Fort,  saw  Howe  and 
his  regiments  cooped  up  within  an  acreage  which  would 
not  support  the  dignity  of  a  small  British  squire,  laughed 
at  King  George's  assurances  that  a  speedy  retribution 
was  to  fall  "  on  the  author  and  promoters  of  a  desperate 
conspiracy."  Horace  Walpole  descanted  to  his  friend 
Mason  on  the  absurdity  of  the  idea  that  the  Congress 
at  Philadelphia  would  be  so  frightened  at  the  British 
army  being  besieged  in  Boston  that  it  would  sue  for 
peace.  The  thought  which  struck  a  man  of  letters, 
writing  in  his  study  at  Twickenham,  was  still  more 
forcibly  brought  home  to  a  Continental  soldier,  already 
something  of  a  veteran,  as  he  stood  behind  the  parapet 
of  an  impregnable  redoubt,  and  fingered  the  lock  of  a 


WASHINGTON  38 1 

new  Tower  musket  which  was  his  share  in  the  spoils  of 
the  store-ship  Nancy.  The  conclusion  at  which  Walpole 
arrived  by  intuition,  Franklin  reached  by  a  process  of 
reckoning.  "  Britain,"  he  said,  "  at  the  expense  of  three 
millions  has  killed  one  hundred  and  fifty  Yankees  this 
campaign,  which  is  twenty  thousand  pounds  a  head ; 
and  at  Bunker's  Hill  she  gained  a  mile  of  ground,  half 
of  which  she  lost  again  by  our  taking  post  on  Ploughed 
Hill.  During  the  same  time  sixty  thousand  children 
have  been  born  in  America."  From  these  data,  (the 
Doctor  argued,)  a  mathematical  head  might  easily  com- 
pute the  time  and  expense  necessary  to  kill  all  American 
rebels,  and  to  conquer  their  whole  territory. 

Congress  had  already  voted  a  Resolution  which  reads 
like  a  decree  of  the  Roman  Senate  in  the  sternest  days 
of  the  Republic.  It  was  to  the  effect  that,  if  General 
Washington  and  his  council  should  be  of  opinion  that  he 
could  make  a  successful  attack  on  the  troops  in  Boston, 
the  attack  should  be  made,  notwithstanding  that  the 
town  and  the  property  in  it  might  thereby  be  destroyed. 
The  President  of  the  assembly,  who  had  large  posses- 
sions in  the  devoted  city,  communicated  the  Resolution 
to  the  General,  and  added  on  his  own  part  a  prayer  that 
God  would  crown  the  undertaking  with  victory.  Half 
way  through  February,  when  a  spell  of  hard  weather 
came,  and  the  channels  between  the  town  and  the  main- 
land were  choked  with  ice,  Washington  was  ready,  and 
even  persuaded  himself  that  he  was  eager,  to  assault  the 
British  lines.  But  his  military  advisers  were  almost 
unanimous  in  the  opposite  sense.  They  warned  the 
Commander-in-Chief  that  he  greatly  under-estimated 
the  strength  of  the  garrison ;  and  a  very  recent  event 
had  indicated  what  would  be  the  chances  of  an  advance 
in  broad  daylight  across  an  ice-field  swept  by  grape 
against  works  held  by  British  infantry,  and  plenty  of  it. 
An  American  storming  party  had  attempted  Quebec  in 
the  darkest  hour  of  the  last  night  of  the  old  year.  The 
enterprise  was  a  complete  and  costly  failure,  though  it 
had  been  heroically  led  by  Richard  Montgomery,  who 


382  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

was  killed,  and  by  Benedict  Arnold,  who  was  badly 
wounded  but,  for  his  misfortune,  was  borne  away  alive. 
The  slaughter  and  discomfiture  which  marked  the 
operation  against  Quebec  would  in  all  human  proba- 
bility be  repeated  at  Boston  on  a  far  larger  scale,  and 
with  most  damaging  consequences  to  the  cause  of  the 
Revolution.  Congress  might  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
Boston ;  but  the  generals  of  the  only  army  which  Con- 
gress had  would  not  expend  their  people  without  reason- 
able hope  of  an  adequate  return.  As  men  of  tried  and 
admitted  courage,  they  had  no  qualms  about  speaking 
out  on  the  side  of  caution  ;  and  their  sturdy  frankness 
did  Washington  a  service  which  he  himself  before  long 
came  very  near  to  acknowledging.  When  he  had  slept 
twice  on  their  counsel,  with  such  sleep  as  during  that 
winter  visited  his  pillow,  he  allowed  that  the  intolerable 
irksomeness  of  his  personal  situation  might  possibly 
have  inclined  him  to  put  more  to  the  hazard  than  pru- 
dence would  have  sanctioned.1 

He  had  refused  to  move  forward  at  the  dictation  of 
public  clamour,  and  he  had  been  restrained  by  those 
around  him  from  obeying  the  momentary  promptings 
of  his  own  impatience.  At  length  he  took  action,  at 
the  due  time,  and  in  the  right  way.  General  Howe  had 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  Boston  was  useless  as  a 
base  of  operations  against  the  continent  of  America, 
and  most  assuredly  could  not  be  regarded  in  the  light 
of  desirable  quarters  for  the  ensuing  summer.  Fully 
intending  sooner  or  later  to  evacuate  the  city,  he  had 
preferred  to  wait  for  additional  transports,  a  fresh  sup- 
ply of  provisions,  and  a  season  more  suited  to  a  voyage 
which  at  the  best  would  be  uncomfortable  and  distress- 
ing, and  terribly  dangerous  in  a  gale.  It  was  no  light 
matter  to  conduct  along  four  hundred  miles  of  hostile 
coast,  in  the  northern  seas,  a  fleet  into  which  would  be 
crowded  a  whole  army,  the  staff  of  a  civil  government, 
and  all  the  loyalists  of  a  great  province,  together  with 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress:  18  Feb.,  1776. 


WASHINGTON  383 

their  families  and  furniture.  The  patriots  inside  Boston, 
always  quick  to  detect  any  symptoms  favourable  to  their 
cause,  apprised  the  American  commander  that  the  Brit- 
ish garrison  would  not  be  long  with  them ;  and  his 
telescope  confirmed  the  story.  Heavy  cannon  were 
seen  to  be  withdrawn  from  the  fortifications  and  carried 
on  board  the  ships.  The  square-rigged  vessels  in  the 
harbour  had  been  taken  into  the  royal  service ;  their 
sails  were  bent,  and  their  water-casks  sent  ashore  to  be 
filled.  All  this  show,  Washington  opined,  might  only  be 
a  feint ; 1  and  he  resolved  to  make  sure  that  it  should 
become  a  reality.  He  devised  a  scheme  which  would 
oblige  the  British  either  to  surrender  the  capital  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, or  come  forth  and  attack  him  on  his  own 
ground  with  no  probability  of  success,  and  all  but  the 
certainty  of  a  frightful  disaster.  But  at  one  end  of  the 
city  or  the  other,  in  fair  weather  or  in  foul,  with  or 
without  bloodshed,  from  Boston  he  was  determined  that 
they  should  go. 

Howe  reposed  in  the  belief  that  he  might  choose  his 
own  moment  for  the  step  which  he  had  in  contempla- 
tion. An  attempt  from  the  rebels,  (he  informed  Lord 
Dartmouth,)  whether  by  surprise  or  otherwise,  was  not 
in  the  least  to  be  apprehended.  Nothing,  he  said,  was 
so  much  to  be  wished  as  that  they  would  have  the  rash- 
ness to  quit  those  strong  intrenchments  to  which  alone 
they  owed  their  safety.  Howe  was  so  far  in  the  right 
that  for  either  Washington  or  himself  to  assault  was  to 
court  defeat ;  inasmuch  as  the  English  and  the  Ameri- 
can positions  were  equally  strong  and  manned  by  troops 
who,  when  fighting  under  cover,  were  equally  good. 
But  where  two  armies  are  so  situated  that  the  defence  is 
more  formidable  than  the  attack,  special  attention  must 
be  paid  to  any  commanding  post  which  one  or  another 
of  the  parties  can  seize  and  fortify  without  a  contest. 
Just  such  a  post  was  the  promontory  of  Dorchester, 
which  covered  and  dominated   Boston  on  the  South. 

1  Washington  to  Major-General  Lee:  Cambridge,  26  Feb.,  1776. 


384  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Two  miles  long,  and  two-thirds  of  a  mile  broad,  it  was 
dotted  with  heights  of  sufficient  elevation  for  military 
purposes,  planted  exactly  where  they  were  most  useful 
to  the  besiegers.  A  battery  placed  on  the  Eastern  ex- 
tremity would  carry  its  shot  across  the  deep-water 
approach  to  the  harbour ;  and  a  battery  on  the  Western 
horn  could  annihilate  the  town. 

Howe  had  neglected  to  secure  the  peninsula,  and  he 
was  not  without  his  excuse.  The  ground,  open  on  the 
quarter  towards  the  enemy,  required  a  larger  force  to 
hold  it  than  he  could  spare  from  his  widely  extended 
and  ever-threatened  lines.  He  had  no  hope  of  being 
reinforced  from  across  the  ocean.  Lord  Barrington,  in 
January,  1776,  laid  a  paper  before  the  King  stating  that 
the  strength  of  the  army  at  home  fell  short  of  fourteen 
thousand,  counting  in  the  officers,  who  in  the  higher 
grades  were  in  prodigious  excess  with  reference  to  the 
men.  "North  Britain,"  he  wrote,  "  never  was  so  bare, 
having  only  one  battalion  of  foot,  and  one  regiment  of 
dragoons,  besides  invalids."  Such  scanty  detachments 
as  were  sent  sailed  months  behind  time,  in  bad  ships,  for 
the  worst  of  reasons.  Frederic  the  Great  did  not  pro- 
fess an  intimate  acquaintance  with  naval  matters ;  and 
indeed  his  solitary  experience  of  navigation  had  been  an 
inland  voyage  in  a  Dutch  canal-boat.  But  he  understood 
as  well  as  any  man  in  Christendom  that  reinforcements 
should  be  brought  on  to  the  field  before  the  event 
instead  of  after  it.  He  learned  with  astonishment  from 
his  envoy  in  London  that,  at  a  crisis  when  every  day 
was  of  consequence,  men  of  war  were  not  employed  for 
the  conveyance  of  troops  because  people  high  in  place 
would  not  surrender  their  commission  of  three  per  cent. 
on  the  hire  of  trading  vessels.1 

Bad  as  it  was,  that  was  not  the  worst  of  the  story. 
In  the  course  of  January,  Clinton,  under  express  orders 
from  home,  started  for  the  Carolinas  with  two  thousand 
men,  who  were  withdrawn  from  the  already  inadequate 

1  Le  Roi  Frederic  au  Comte  de  Maltzan,  Potsdam,  8  Avril,  1776.  Le 
Comte  de  Maltzan  au  Roi  Frederic,  Londres,  23  Avril,  1776. 


WASHING  TON  385 

garrison  of  Boston.  Lord  Barrington  was  opposed  to 
the  expedition ;  but  his  dislike  of  the  project  had  been 
overborne  by  other  Ministers  who,  because  inside  the 
Cabinet  they  were  ruder  fighters  than  the  Secretary  at 
War,  thought  themselves  sounder  judges  of  a  military 
operation.  The  unhappy  nobleman  who  was  supposed 
to  wield  the  sword  of  England  surrendered  his  view  the 
more  easily  because  the  raid  on  the  Southern  colonies  of 
America  soon  became  a  pet  scheme  of  his  royal  master. 
The  King  himself,  with  his  customary  minuteness  and 
precision,  named  the  regiments  which  were  to  sail  from 
the  Home  ports ;  and  his  zeal  was  so  great  that,  while 
the  army  in  Ireland  had  been  reduced  too  low  for  safety, 
and  Scotland  had  been  stripped  almost  bare,  only  three 
battalions  of  regular  infantry  remained  available  for  the 
protection  of  the  whole  of  England.  Clinton  was  joined 
off  Charleston  by  Lord  Cornwallis,  who  brought  at  least 
two  thousand  more  soldiers,  and  by  Sir  Peter  Parker 
with  some  fifty  gun-ships  and  frigates.  But  the  force 
which,  if  it  had  been  left  with  Howe,  might  have  en- 
abled him  to  hold  his  own  in  New  England,  was  all  too 
weak  for  independent  action.  The  outworks  protecting 
"the  approach  to  Charleston  were  feebly  attacked,  and 
stoutly  defended  ;  and  the  affair  resulted  in  a  failure  for 
Clinton,  and  in  nothing  short  of  a  calamity  for  Parker 
and  his  squadron. 

Washington,  on  the  other  hand,  had  men  enough 
not  only  for  the  indispensable  requirements  but  also 
for  the  profitable  risks  of  war.  There  had  been  a  de- 
ficiency of  heavy  guns ;  but  at  last  that  want  was  sup- 
plied. Immediately  after  Lexington  a  handful  of 
American  volunteers  —  with  Benedict  Arnold,  and  bet- 
ter men  than  him,  among  them,  though  braver  there 
could  not  be  —  captured  Ticonderoga  by  a  stroke  of 
well-timed  and  audacious  inspiration.  The  fortress  con- 
tained a  great  store  of  cannon,  which  had  formerly  been 
transported  into  those  distant  wilds  by  Anglo-Saxon 
energy.     The  stock  of  that  latter  article  had  not  run 

2C 


386  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

out.  Colonel  Knox,  a  deft  and  enterprising  officer  high 
in  Washington's  confidence,  built  sledges,  and  in  the  dead 
of  winter  hauled  the  priceless  freight  Southward  along 
frozen  lakes,  and  over  forest  roads  which  were  barely 
passable  during  the  droughts  of  summer.  When  the  first 
and  worst  stage  of  the  journey  had  been  overcome,  and 
nothing  more  serious  than  fifty  leagues  of  snowdrift 
and  mire  lay  between  himself  and  the  goal  towards 
which  he  was  travelling,  the  Colonel  gaily  wrote  that 
he  hoped  to  present  his  Excellency  with  a  whole  train 
of  artillery.  Before  March  he  handed  over  to  his 
chief  forty  large  guns,  and  half  as  many  mortars ; 
and  Washington  in  the  meanwhile,  by  his  own  exer- 
tions, had  scraped  together  the  wherewithal  at  least  to 
open  fire.  He  had  ammunition  enough  to  go  once 
round  the  army ;  but,  when  the  cartridge  boxes  of 
the  infantry  were  replenished,  and  the  magazines  in  the 
batteries  had  been  filled  up,  only  a  hundred  barrels  of 
powder  remained  in  reserve.  Other  military  stores  had 
been  provided  in  plenty  ;  rude  of  design,  although  suited 
for  rough  and  temporary  work  in  the  hands  of  dexterous 
and  hardy  men.  As  material  for  breastworks  there 
were  vast  piles  of  faggots,  and  of  grass  ropes  such  as  a 
pair  of  New  England  haymakers  could  twist  at  the  rate 
of  a  fathom  a  minute.  There  were  empty  casks,  to 
hold  the  earth  from  the  ditches ;  stacks  of  shovels  and 
pickaxes  ;  and  two  thousand  bandages  for  broken  limbs, 
which  by  the  grace  of  Heaven,  or  the  good  sense  of 
man,  never  came  to  be  needed.  Out  of  sight  from  the 
British  lines,  if  not  from  the  British  spies,  there  lay  in 
Charles  River  two  floating  batteries,  and  barges  with 
room  to  carry  ten  battalions  across  a  stretch  of  smooth 
water.  They  had  been  constructed  hastily  and  slightly, 
but  by  people  the  occupation  of  whose  lives  had  taught 
them  to  know  whether  or  not  a  boat  would  swim.  And, 
at  the  last  moment,  the  militia  of  all  the  neighbouring 
townships  repaired  to  camp,  with  a  pledge  from  Wash- 
ington that  he  would  not  keep  them  long,  and  a  belief 
on  their  part  that  this  time  the  General  purposed  to  see 
the  business  through. 


WASHING  1  ON  387 

They  were  correct  in  their  anticipations.  On  those 
rare  occasions  when  Washington  had  the  means  to  as- 
sume the  offensive,  his  action  was  as  swift,  as  direct, 
as  continuous,  and  (for  its  special  characteristic)  as  un- 
expected as  that  of  any  captain  in  history.  He  had  not 
fought  Red  Indians  in  his  youth  for  nothing.  But, 
secret  and  silent  as  he  was  in  regard  to  the  direction 
and  the  details  of  his  future  movements,  Washington 
was  too  much  of  a  citizen  not  to  place  himself  in  close 
mental  relation  with  his  soldiers  before  he  called  upon 
them  for  unusual  efforts  and  sacrifices.  On  the  eve  of 
the  final  struggle  he  issued  an  appeal  to  the  army.  Ex- 
cept in  its  perfect  suitability  to  the  tastes  and  aspira- 
tions of  those  whom  he  addressed,  it  was  a  composition 
very  unlike  those  bulletins  by  which  under  the  Directory 
and  the  First  Empire  the  French  were  incited  to  the 
conquest  and  plunder  of  Europe.  His  General  Order 
of  February  the  twenty-sixth  began  by  forbidding  offi- 
cers, non-commissioned  officers,  or  privates  to  play  at 
cards  or  other  games  of  chance ;  inasmuch  as,  at  a  time 
of  distress,  men  might  find  enough  to  do  in  the  service 
of  God  and  their  country  without  abandoning  themselves 
to  vice  and  immorality.  As  the  season  was  now  fast  ap- 
proaching (so  the  proclamation  went  on)  when  every 
man  might  expect  to  be  drawn  into  the  field  of  action, 
it  was  highly  important  that  he  should  prepare  his  mind 
for  what  lay  before  him.  They  were  engaged  in  a 
noble  cause.  Freedom  or  slavery  would  be  the  result 
of  their  conduct.  Every  temporal  advantage  to  them 
and  their  posterity  would  depend  upon  the  vigour  of 
their  exertions. 

These  words  were  still  being  quoted  and  commented 
on  throughout  the  camp  when  they  were  drowned  by 
the  roar  of  cannon,  but  not  forgotten.  On  the  second 
of  March,  and  again  on  the  fourth,  the  American  bat- 
teries commenced  to  play.  The  noise  was  tremendous, 
but  the  slaughter  small.  A  distant  bombardment,  with 
the  ordnance  of  the  eighteenth  century,  produced  few 
of  the  horrors  of  war  except  only  to  the  taxpayer.     Up 


388  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  Christmas,  1775,  the  British  garrison  had  discharged 
two  thousand  rounds,  and  had  killed  less  than  twenty 
of  the  enemy.  And  the  moral  effect,  as  it  is  called,  was 
so  much  the  reverse  of  what  was  intended  that  the  com- 
manding officer  of  artillery  advised  General  Howe  to 
discontinue  the  cannonade,  as  the  only  perceptible  re- 
sult was  to  inure  the  colonists  to  danger.  In  March, 
however,  when  Washington's  cannon  began  to  speak, 
the  British  gunners  could  not  refuse  the  challenge. 
They  replied  lustily ;  but  they  shot  next  to  no  one,  and 
dismounted  nothing,  although  the  besiegers  contrived  to 
burst  five  of  their  own  mortars.1 

The  Americans  hit  a  regimental  guard-house,  which 
they  could  not  very  well  miss,  and  not  many  human 
beings.  Nevertheless  on  their  side  it  was  no  waste  of 
powder.  On  Monday  the  fourth  of  March  the  besiegers 
maintained  a  heavy  fire  far  into  the  night.  The  soldiers 
in  Boston  were  kept  busy  extinguishing  flames  and  re- 
moving goods  from  beneath  falling  roofs ;  and  they  had 
neither  eyes  nor  ears  for  what  was  passing  to  the  South- 
ward of  them.  Soon  after  dark  General  Thomas  led  a 
strong  brigade  over  Dorchester  Neck,  followed  by  three 
hundred  carts  laden  with  fascines  and  coils  of  twisted 
hay.  With  these  materials  a  parapet  was  rapidly  built 
along  the  causeway,  under  cover  of  which  fresh  loads 
of  stuff  travelled  to  and  fro  throughout  the  night. 
Meanwhile  on  each  of  the  twin  heights  in  the  centre  of 
the  peninsula,  which  were  the  keys  of  the  position,  the 
colonial  soldiers  were  digging,  and  ramming,  and  plas- 

1  General  Heath's  Diary,  December  18,  1775.  In  the  course  of  that 
morning  the  Americans  broke  ground  on  Lechmere  Point,  the  most  ex- 
posed spot  in  their  lines.  Their  working  party  numbered  three  hundred. 
An  expectation  prevailed  that  it  would  be  "a  bloody  day";  and  Washing- 
ton personally  superintended  the  conduct  of  the  operation.  The  British 
batteries,  until  the  afternoon,  thundered  away  both  with  shot  and  shell; 
and  the  American  surgeon  who  was  at  hand  throughout  never  once  drew 
his  instruments  from  their  case,  or  a  roll  of  lint  from  his  dressing-box.  A 
plain  man,  who  has  fired  a  charge  of  slugs  at  an  object  in  the  water  a  hun- 
dred yards  off,  may  estimate  the  value  of  a  remote  cannonade  from  old- 
fashioned  twenty-four  pounders,  even  if  he  has  never  looked  into  a  treatise 
on  the  law  of  projectiles. 


WASHINGTON  389 

tering  the  earth,  like  so  many  peasants  of  Holland 
strengthening  an  embankment  to  save  their  village  from 
an  inundation.  At  dawn  of  day  two  forts  were  already 
in  existence,  and  in  a  condition  to  protect  their  inmates 
from  grape-shot  and  musket-balls.  A  British  officer  of 
a  sentimental  turn  compared  the  result  of  the  night's 
labour  with  the  wonders  wrought  by  the  lamp  of  Alad- 
din. In  less  flowery  but  fatally  unpractical  words  Gen- 
eral Howe  told  Lord  Dartmouth  that  at  least  twelve 
thousand  men  must  have  been  employed  on  the  fortifi- 
cation. The  rebels,  he  remarked,  had  done  more  be- 
tween evening  and  morning  than  the  whole  of  his  own 
army  would  have  accomplished  in  an  entire  month.  He 
had  made  an  error  of  a  thousand  per  cent. ;  for  the 
American  working  party  did  not  exceed  twelve  hundred 
pairs  of  arms.  It  would  have  been  well  for  Howe  if  his 
professional  education  had  included  a  course  of  land- 
surveying  in  company  with  Washington,  or  even  of 
building  fences  with  Putnam.  The  royal  forces  were 
embarked  on  a  war  of  such  a  character,  and  in  such  a 
country,  that  the  hatchet  and  the  spade  ranked  high 
among  military  weapons.  A  general  who  knew  some- 
thing about  homely  industries,  and  their  application  to 
strategical  purposes,  would  have  been  of  great  service 
to  an  army  where  guidance  and  teaching  in  that  de- 
partment were  peculiarly  needed.  The  behaviour  of 
the  British  soldier  in  the  labours  of  the  trench  and  the 
field-work  was  his  weakest  point  then,  and  forty  years 
afterwards;  as  was  sorrowfully  admitted  by  the  best 
judges,  who  in  other  respects  were  his  warm  admirers.1 
Howe  was  unskilled  in  appraising  the  amount  which 

1  On  this  subject  Sir  John  Burgoyne,  in  his  account  of  the  siege  of 
Burgos,  has  made  some  observations  which  are  most  interesting,  but  (even 
after  this  lapse  of  time)  not  altogether  agreeable  reading.  "  I  had,"  he 
says  in  the  course  of  his  remarks,  "  an  opportunity  of  pointing  out  to  Lord 
Wellington,  one  day,  a  French  and  an  English  working  party,  each  exca- 
vating a  trench.  While  the  French  shovels  were  going  on  as  merrily  as 
possible,  we  saw  in  an  equal  space,  at  long  intervals,  a  single  English 
shovelful  make  its  appearance."  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Field  Mar- 
shal Sir  John  Burgoyne,  pp.  232  and  233  of  the  edition  of  1873. 


390  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

any  given  number  of  sappers  or  artificers  could  get 
done  in  a  given  number  of  hours ;  but  he  had  seen  too 
many  battles  and  sieges  for  him  to  have  any  doubt  as 
to  the  plight  in  which  the  latest  move  of  his  adversaries 
had  landed  him.  He  was  not  the  player  to  accept 
checkmate  when  it  was  first  offered.  Between  two  and 
three  thousand  of  his  infantry  were  at  once  shipped  on 
transports  to  Castle  Island,  with  the  design  that  they 
should  thence  attack  the  promontory  of  Dorchester. 
For  their  commander  Howe  had  only  to  choose  among 
the  men  of  headlong  courage  at  his  disposal,  and  he 
chose  Lord  Percy,  who  had  no  objection,  on  his  own 
account,  to  face  whatever  might  await  him  across  the 
southern  arm  of  the  harbour.  The  forces  under  Thomas 
had  been  doubled  by  a  reinforcement  of  two  thousand 
men.  The  works,  formidable  at  daybreak,  before  noon 
had  received  a  finishing  touch.  Orchards  had  been  cut 
down  to  form  an  abattis.  Rows  of  barrels  filled  with 
earth  were  placed  along  the  edge  of  the  hill,  which  was 
bare  and  steep,  with  the  design  of  rolling  them  down 
upon  the  ascending  columns.  The  Americans  every- 
where seemed  cheery  and  resolute,  and  those  ensconced 
behind  the  earthworks  on  Dorchester  heights  were  even 
exhilarated.  They  looked  forward  to  another  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill  in  a  position  twice  as  strong,  with  a  force 
more  than  twice  as  large,  and  under  the  immediate  eye 
of  the  General-in-Chief;  for  Washington  was  on  the 
spot  full  of  fight  and,  for  him,  full  of  talk,  and  as  hope- 
ful of  victory  as  the  youngest  of  his  followers. 

Hopeful,  that  is,  in  the  quarter  where  he  commanded 
in  person ;  for  he  was  far  from  easy  about  the  fate  of 
the  operation  to  which  his  left  wing  stood  committed. 
Putnam  had  four  thousand  selected  troops  on  the 
parade  ground  at  Cambridge,  ready  at  a  signal  from 
Dorchester  heights  to  enter  the  flotilla  which  lay  in  the 
river,  and  advance  by  water  against  the  western  face 
of  Boston  under  cover  of  the  new  floating  batteries. 
Washington  disapproved  the  project;  but  his  judgment 
had  been  over-ridden,  and  it  only  remained  for  him  loy- 


WA  SHING  TON  39 1 

ally  to  make  the  best  of  a  plan  the  wisdom  of  which  he 
gravely  and  sadly  doubted.  At  this  period  of  the  war 
the  command  in  chief  of  the  American  army  was  rather 
a  limited  monarchy  than  the  benevolent  despotism  into 
which  it  was  gradually  converted  by  the  pressure  of  his 
strong  character  and  the  lustre  of  his  first  great  suc- 
cess. Congress  began  by  being  keenly  inquisitive  into 
the  movements  of  the  army,  and  was  much  too  anxious 
about  the  event  to  refrain  from  advising  and  even  from 
meddling.  The  delegates  at  Philadelphia  were  suffi- 
ciently afraid  of  Washington  to  abstain  from  giving  him 
a  direct  order.  They  transmitted  their  views  to  the  head- 
quarters at  Cambridge  in  the  shape  of  proposals  which 
they  requested  him  to  have  debated  and  decided  in  a 
council  of  war.  Such  a  council  had  recently  been  con- 
voked, in  which  Washington  was  outvoted ;  and  so  it 
came  about  that  the  Americans  were  to  deliver  and  to 
sustain  an  attack  on  one  and  the  same  day.  That  day 
was  the  anniversary  of  what  was  called  the  Boston  Mas- 
sacre, and  this  time  there  would  have  been  a  massacre 
indeed.  It  was  odds,  and  large  odds,  that  neither  of  the 
two  assaults  could  succeed ;  and  the  assailants  in  both 
cases  were  of  such  tough  fibre,  and  their  leaders  so  fiery 
and  determined,  that  failure  would  not  have  taken  place 
until  after  a  prolonged  slaughter.  If  the  fighting  had 
once  begun,  the  history  of  the  Revolutionary  war  would 
have  been  disfigured  by  a  more  deeply  crimsoned  page 
than  any  which  can  now  be  found  in  the  volume. 

But  it  was  not  so  to  be.  The  wind  blew  a  gale. 
Sashes  were  forced  in,  sheds  were  wrecked  and  over- 
thrown, and  vessels  torn  from  their  moorings  and  driven 
against  the  quays.  Percy's  transports  could  not  cross 
the  water  in  such  a  hurricane ;  and,  until  the  British 
took  the  initiative,  Washington  refused  to  give  the  sig- 
nal for  Putnam's  forward  movement.  He  was  blamed 
for  want  of  firmness ;  but  the  old  officer  whom  he  had 
superseded  in  the  command  of  the  army  generously  and 
indignantly  defended  one  who  never  was  at  the  pains 
to  defend  himself.     The  prudence    of  Washington,  so 


392  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

General  Heath  declared,  was  applauded  by  military  men 
of  several  nations  after  they  had  made  an  inspection  of 
the  land  and  water  which  was  to  have  been  the  scene 
of  action.  And  the  veteran  was  mindful  to  direct  his 
gratitude  higher  still,  and  to  aver  that  Providence,  kind 
not  for  the  first  time,  must  have  interposed  to  save  his 
countrymen  when  they  were  bent  on  self-destruction.1 

The  storm  raged  through  the  afternoon  and  night  of 
the  fifth  of  March ;  and  next  day  the  wind  was  still 
boisterous,  and  the  rain  came  down  in  torrents.  Before 
the  weather  grew  calm  and  dry  it  had  been  brought 
home  to  the  British  General  that  the  Americans  could 
not  be  expelled  from  their  redoubts  and  that,  so  long  as 
they  stayed  in  the  redoubts,  they  were  masters  of  the 
whole  promontory.  Immediately  to  their  front,  and  at 
their  disposal  when  they  thought  fit  to  occupy  it,  was  a 
mound  known  as  Nook's  Hill,  from  which  at  the  distance 
of  half  a  mile  they  could  enfilade  the  British  earthworks 
on  Boston  Neck,  and  would  not  be  much  further  from 
Griffin's  Wharf  where  the  immortal  tea  was  spilt. 
Admiral  Shuldham,  who  had  succeeded  Graves  in  com- 
mand of  the  fleet,  warned  the  military  authorities  that,  if 
Washington  retained  his  hold  on  the  Dorchester  heights, 
he  himself  could  not  keep  a  ship  in  the  harbour.  When 
the  prospect  of  a  battle  had  vanished,  the  disappoint- 
ment of  the  British  soon  took  the  form  of  despondency. 
Right  or  wrong,  the  belief  was  general  that  for  the  space 
of  several  months  no  despatches  had  been  received  from 
the  Government  in  London.  It  looked,  (such  was  the 
burden  of  the  private  letters  written  by  the  garrison  dur- 
ing that  anxious  fortnight,)  as  if  the  men  in  the  post  of 
danger,  now  that  it  was  fast  becoming  an  abode  of  de- 
spair, had  been  left  to  get  out  of  a  bad  scrape  as  best 
they  could.  "  The  fleet  and  the  army,"  it  was  said,  "  com- 
plain of  each  other,  and  both  of  the  people  at  home." 
With  that  suspicion  in  their  minds  the  superior  officers 
repaired  to  a  council  which  Howe  convened,  and  learned 

1  Heath's  Memoirs,  Feb.  15th  and  March  5th,  1776. 


WASHINGTON  393 

from  him,  without  surprise  or  dissatisfaction,  that  he  was 
fully  determined  at  whatever  cost  to  save  the  army. 

The  danger  was  pressing.  After  dark  on  the  ninth 
of  March  the  New  Englanders  were  already  busy  on 
Nook's  Hill.  They  laboured  undiscovered  and  unmo- 
lested till  some  stupid  fellows  kindled  a  fire  in  rear  of 
the  knoll,  and  soon  found  the  place  even  warmer  than 
they  wished  or  intended.  Four  of  them  were  killed  by 
one  cannon-ball,  and  the  detachment  was  withdrawn  to 
await  a  more  convenient  opportunity.  But  the  incident 
gave  Howe  food  for  reflection.  The  Americans,  it  was 
evident,  might  choose  their  own  moment  for  erecting 
batteries  at  a  range  within  which  round-shot  could  be 
aimed  with  effect  at  a  knot  of  men,  and  much  more 
against  ships  and  houses,  the  tilt  of  a  powder  waggon, 
or  the  flank  of  a  line  of  cannon  planted  along  the  cur- 
tain of  a  fortification.  Next  day  he  began  to  push  for- 
ward his  arrangements  for  the  evacuation  of  the  town ; 
and,  wherever  Howe  exerted  himself,  he  worked  fast. 
But  he  was  not  quick  enough  to  please  Washington, 
who  gave  him  a  significant  hint  that  the  patience  of 
the  besiegers  was  near  to  exhaustion.  The  colonists 
returned  to  Nook's  Hill,  and  crowned  the  eminence  with 
a  redoubt,  from  which  this  time  they  refused  to  be 
driven.  That  was  the  notice  to  quit.  It  was  handed 
in  on  the  sixteenth  of  March ;  and  on  the  seventeenth 
General  Howe  embarked  his  army,  and  Washington  was 
a  figure  in  history.  It  was  exactly  the  operation  which, 
repeated  half  a  generation  afterwards  in  the  port  of 
Toulon,  laid  the  foundation  of  a  fame  less  desirable, 
and  a  life's  work  far  less  durable  than  his.1 


1  For  the  two  previous  paragraphs  see  Heath's  Memoirs,  March  9. 
1776.  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress,  March  7,  9,  13,  and  16, 
Fotheringham's  Siege  of  Boston,  chapter  xii. 

David  How's  Diary  shows  how  a  great  event  struck  a  humble  contem- 
porary, who  had  played  a  man's  part  in  helping  to  bring  it  about. 

"  March  3.  Last  night  there  was  Firing  Amost  all  night  on  both  sides. 
Two  of  our  mortars  splet  in  pices  at  Litchmor's  point. 

"  March  4.  Last  night  there  was  A  fiering  all  night  with  cannan  and 
Morters  on  both  sides.     Three  Regments  went  from  Cambridge  to  Rox- 


394  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Unfortunately  there  was  more  than  a  tactical  and 
topographical  resemblance  between  the  recapture  of 
Toulon  and  the  capture  of  Boston.  Those  two  great 
events  are  marked  by  the  same  melancholy  and  even 
tragic  circumstance.  In  both  cases  the  retirement  of 
a  fleet  and  an  army  was  accompanied  by  a  wholesale 
and  enforced  emigration  of  non-combatants.  The  an- 
nouncement that  the  city  was  to  be  surrendered  fell  as 
a  thunderbolt  on  the  loyalists  whose  home  it  was,  and 
not  less  on  those  who  had  repaired  thither  as  a  place 
of  temporary  refuge.  The  last  trump,  (so  Washington 
wrote,)  could  not  have  struck  them  with  greater  con- 
sternation. A  fixed  and  ardent  faith  in  the  overwhelm- 
ing and  omnipresent  power  of  Britain  was  the  first  article 
in  the  creed  of  the  American  Tories ;  —  for  that  term 
was  universally  applied  to  them  by  themselves  and 
their  fellow-colonists,  although  among  those  politicians 
at  Westminster  whom  they  had  trusted  and  followed  to 
their  ruin  many  still  laid  claim  to  the  name  of  Whigs. 
When  Howe  departed  from  Boston  there  were  eleven 
hundred  people  who  dared  not  stay  behind,  or  one  for 
every  ten  of  his  soldiers  and  sailors.  They  formed  the 
aristocracy  of  the  province  by  virtue  of  their  official 
rank ;  of  their  dignified  callings  and  professions ;  of 
their  hereditary  wealth ;  and  of  their  culture,  except  so 
far  as  it  partook  of  that  self-education  which  was  open 
to  all. 

Eighteen  were  clergymen,  for  the  most  part  Episco- 
palians, as  true  to  what  they  believed  to  be  their  politi- 
cal obligations  as  any  English  Nonjuror  who  went  out 
from  his  parsonage  or  his  palace  in  the  summer  of  1689. 

bury  and  carried  Some  Field  Pieces  with  them.  The  Milisher  from  Sev- 
eral towns  are  called  In  to  stay  3  days. 

"  March  5.  Our  people  went  to  Dodgster  hill  Last  Night  and  built  a 
fort  there.     They  have  ben  firing  at  Dogester  amost  All  Day. 

"  March  10.  Last  night  our  people  went  to  Dodesther  neck  And  there 
was  a  hot  fire  from  Boston  which  Killed  4  men  with  one  ball.  I  went  to 
meting  all  Day;    Mr.  Lennard  preached. 

"  March  12.  Last  night  there  was  brisk  fireing  all  Night  From  boston. 
William  Parker  made  me  a  pair  of  Half  Boots  for  Two  Shilling  and  8d." 


THE  REFUGEES  395 

Among  the  exiles  many  were  landowners  and  substantial 
men  of  business,  and  a  greater  number  still  were  public 
servants.  Good  places,  whether  lay  or  legal,  were  re- 
served for  people  who  regarded  themselves  as  belonging 
to  good  families.  The  same  names,  and  those  not  many, 
occur  over  and  over  again  as  Judges  of  the  Superior 
Court;  Receivers  General  and  Cashiers  of  his  Majesty's 
Customs ;  Commissioners,  Inspectors,  Treasurers,  and 
Registrars  and  Clerks  of  Probate.  Hutchinsons  and 
Olivers,  Leonards,  Chandlers,  and  Coffins — patronymics 
which  to  a  Bostonian  of  those  days  denoted  the  very 
quintessence  of  exclusiveness  —  divided  among  them- 
selves salaries  and  honours,  perquisites  and  privileges. 
They  honestly  believed  that  the  fitness  of  things  required 
the  established  method  of  distribution  to  last  for  ever. 
Their  best  feelings  were  hurt  when  a  new  man,  with 
newfangled  political  opinions,  put  in  his  claim  to  a 
share.  The  inspiring  motive,  according  to  their  story, 
of  every  Revolutionary  leader  was  the  need  and  greed 
for  office ;  and  their  posterity  across  the  Canadian  fron- 
tier continued,  in  filial  good  faith,  to  repeat  the  same 
tale  for  the  benefit  of  our  own  generation. 

In  their  view  Congressmen  and  Committee-men  were 
"  a  set  of  rascals,  who  only  sought  to  feather  their  own 
nests,  and  not  to  serve  their  country."  An  unlucky 
loyalist  who  happened  to  use  those  expressions  in  ill- 
chosen  company  got  himself  inside  a  jail ;  and  the  words 
have  a  natural  and  almost  elemental  ring  about  them 
which  irresistibly  suggests  that  it  was  not  the  first  time, 
by  a  hundred,  that  they  had  been  uttered  with  emphasis 
in  Tory  circles.  According  to  the  theory  accepted  by 
those  circles,  Otis  started  the  agitation  which  started 
everything  because  his  father  had  missed  a  judgeship. 
Joseph  Warren  was  a  broken  man,  and  sought  to  mend 
his  fortunes  by  upsetting  those  of  others.  John  Hancock, 
too  rich  to  want  a  place,  suffered  from  wounded  vanity 
when  walking  behind  his  betters  in  the  order  of  prece- 
dence. Richard  Henry  Lee  had  been  baulked  of  an 
appointment  as  distributor  of  stamps  under   the   Act 


396  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

which  then,  and  only  then,  he  came  forward  to  de- 
nounce. John  Adams  turned  rebel  because  he  was 
refused  a  Commission  of  the  Peace ;  and  Washington 
himself  never  forgave  the  British  War  Office  for  having 
treated  him  with  the  neglect  which  was  the  natural 
portion  of  Provincial  military  officers.  It  was  an  argu- 
ment with  two  edges;  and  there  is  now  little  doubt 
which  of  the  two  cut  the  sharpest.  What  claim  to  per- 
petuity, (it  has  been  finely  asked,1)  had  those  institu- 
tions under  which  John  Adams  could  not  be  a  magistrate, 
and  any  stripling  who  had  purchased  a  pair  of  colours 
took  rank  of  George  Washington  ?  Disappointed  men 
perhaps  they  were.  But  their  day  arrived  ;  and,  if  they 
could  not  be  justices  or  majors  in  a  marching  regiment, 
they  both  obtained  a  post  for  which  they  were  not  less 
competent,  and  became  each  in  his  turn  the  chief  gov- 
ernor of  a  nation. 

The  loyalists  were  a  prosperous  and  enjoying  set, 
free  with  their  cash ;  hearty  with  their  fellows ;  just, 
and  something  more,  towards  those  who  had  a  claim  on 
them;  and  very  indulgent  to  their  negro  slaves.  They 
were  not  ascetics ;  and,  if  they  had  stayed  in  the  country, 
it  is  possible  that  the  march  of  Temperance  legislation 
would  have  been  seriously  delayed  in  some  of  the  New 
England  districts.  The  breaking  of  his  punch-bowl  was 
the  worst  damage  to  his  property  which  Doctor  Peters 
of  Hebron  had  to  deplore,  when  his  angry  parishioners 
came  to  search  his  house  for  arms.  An  epitaph  com- 
posed for  himself  by  an  Episcopalian  clergyman,  com- 
mencing with  the  lines, 

Here  lies  a  priest  of  English  blood 
Who  living  liked  whate'er  was  good, 

would  not  have  been  misplaced  on  the  tombstones  of 
many  among  his  reverend  brethren.  Clerics,  men  of 
business,  and  country  gentlemen,  they  dressed  ceremoni- 
ously and   expensively ;    and   they  had    manners,   and 

1  Sabine's  Historical  Essay  :  p.  57  in  the  Boston  edition  of  1864. 


THE  REFUGEES  397 

those  not  merely  skin-deep,  in  harmony  with  their  ex- 
ternal appearance.  Doctor  Walter  of  Boston  "was  a 
remarkably  handsome  man,  tall  and  well-proportioned. 
When  in  the  street  he  wore  a  long  blue  cloth  cloak  over 
his  cassock  and  gown ;  a  full-bottomed  wig,  black  silk 
hose,  and  square-quartered  shoes  with  silver  buckles. 
Happy  himself,  he  communicated  happiness  to  all  around 
him.  In  the  desk  he  read  the  glorious  service  like  one 
inspired.  His  heart,  his  house,  his  purse  was  ever  open 
to  the  needy."  The  Governor  of  Rhode  Island,  who 
was  a  native  of  the  colony  and  a  resident  at  the  pleasant 
town  of  Newport,  in  the  matter  of  a  wig  was  satisfied 
with  nothing  less  than  one  made  in  England  of  the  pat- 
tern and  size  worn  by  the  Speaker  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Green  and  gold,  or  purple  and  gold,  formed 
the  daily  costume  of  a  wealthy  Tory  merchant.1  It  was 
not  all  outside  show.  The  more  notable  members  of 
the  British  party  were  given  to  polite  learning,  and 
spared  neither  care  nor  money  over  the  education  of 
their  sons.  In  that  numerous  contingent  of  emigrants 
which  left  the  province  when  Boston  fell,  one  out  of 
every  five  was  a  Harvard  man.  The  colonies,  if  we  may 
trust  a  comparison  which  occurred  to  a  lady  who  knew 
them  before  the  war,  suffered  as  much  and  in  the  same 
way  by  the  expulsion  of  the  loyalists  as  France,  under 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  ever  after,  suffered  by  the 
expatriation  of  the  Huguenots.  The  remark  went  too 
far,  and  not  exactly  in  the  right  direction ;  but  it  cannot 
be  questioned  that  the  Revolution  made  America  the 
poorer  by  some  elements  which  during  the  next  half- 
century  that  country  could  ill  afford  to  lose.2 

The  loyalists  were  fully  persuaded  that  they  were 
more  estimable  than  the  majority  of  their  fellow-sub- 
jects ;    and   they    attributed   their   superiority,  whether 

1  The  Articles  on  the  Rev.  William  Walter,  Joseph  Wanton,  and  Nathan 
Rogers  in  Sabine's  Loyalists. 

'2  Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan.  She  left  America  in  1786  at  the  age  of  thir- 
teen or  fourteen;  but  she  was  a  very  precocious  child,  and  grew  into  a 
thoughtful  woman. 


398  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

real  or  fancied,  to  themselves  and  not  to  their  circum- 
stances. They  spoke  and  wrote  of  their  opponents  in  a 
tone  of  class  arrogance  which,  when  once  the  rift  came, 
made  reconciliation  impossible.  In  the  rhymed  satires 
and  political  catechisms  which  issued  from  the  Tory 
press  the  most  respected  members  of  the  popular  party 
were  held  up  to  scorn  as  the  refuse  of  mankind.  The 
delegates  to  the  Congress  were  described  as  pettifogging 
attorneys,  disbarred  advocates,  outlawed  smugglers, 
bankrupt  shopkeepers;  and,  at  the  best,  as  innkeepers 
and  horsedealers  who  had  not  as  yet  gone  through  the 
Court.  The  world  was  told  how  a  bricklayer  or  carpen- 
ter would  lie  down  at  night,  and  awake  in  the  morning 
a  Lycurgus  or  a  Solon.  As  each  demagogue  in  turn, 
by  rope  or  otherwise,  went  to  his  appointed  place,  he 
would  be  hailed  as  a  brother  by  Catiline,  Jack  Cade,  and 
Cromwell ;  an  ill-assorted  trio,  it  must  be  allowed,  who 
would  have  found  some  difficulty  in  establishing  fra- 
ternity among  themselves.  History  —  or  what  in  the 
days  before  Niebuhr  and  Mommsen  passed  for  history 
■ —  was  ransacked  for  humiliating  parallels  to  the  states- 
men of  the  American  Revolution. 

Imperial  Rome  from  scoundrels  rose : 
Her  grandeur's  hailed  in  verse  and  prose  : 
Venice  the  dregs  of  sea  compose. 

So  sprung  the  mighty  Congress. 
When  insects  vile  emerge  to  light 
They  take  their  short  inglorious  flight, 
Then  sink  again  to  native  night ; 

An  emblem  of  the  Congress. 

The  loyalist  poets  and  pamphleteers  might  have  mal- 
treated the  politicians  with  comparative  impunity  to 
themselves  and  their  cause  if  they  had  left  the  soldiers 
alone.  Men  accustomed  to  the  give  and  take  of  contro- 
versy fail  to  recognise  what  it  is  for  quiet  obscure  people 
to  have  those  near  and  dear  to  them  ridiculed  and  vili- 
fied in  print.  A  farmer's  family,  with  an  empty  chair 
reminding  them  of  some  one  who  was  digging  in  the 


THE  REFUGEES  399 

trenches  amidst  the  cannon-balls,  or  lying  with  his  face 
to  the  daisies  three  feet  below  the  grass  on  Bunker's 
Hill,  did  not  see  the  joke  when  they  read  how  the 
American  militia  were  awkward  cowardly  bumpkins, 
and  their  officers  scheming  upstarts. 

With  loud  peals  of  laughter  your  sides,  sirs,  would  crack 
To  see  General  Convict,  and  Colonel  Shoe-black, 
All  strutting  the  standard  of  Satan  beside, 
And  honest  names  using  their  black  deeds  to  hide. 

That  was  how  a  Tyrtaeus  of  the  messroom  travestied 
the  manly,  unpretending  figures  of  Greene  and  Thomas, 
and  the  antique  worth  of  Heath  and  Pomeroy.  Those 
must  have  been  far  gone  in  political  fanaticism  who 
could  detect  either  truth  or  humour  in  such  couplets. 
It  may  be  that,  amidst  the  distractions  of  the  period, 
the  authors  of  these  effusions  had  not  leisure  to  write 
better ;  but  it  is  strange  that  descendants  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  should  have  borrowed  their  controversial  weap- 
ons from  one  or  another  Cavalier  libeller  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  New  Englanders,  if  any 
people,  should  have  remembered  that  the  reproach  of 
having  earned  their  bread  by  manual  labour  or  by  trade 
was  habitually  levelled  at  Roundheads,  and  that  the 
sturdy  warriors  against  whom  the  imputation  was  di- 
rected cared  nothing  for  it;  nor,  when  the  battle  was 
joined,  was  it  much  consolation  to  those  among  the 
scoffers  who  had  to  face  them  in  the  field.  Seldom,  in 
truth,  have  two  assemblages  of  men  —  divided  from 
each  other  by  four  generations,  and  a  thousand  leagues 
—  had  so  much  in  common  as  the  army  which  fought 
against  Charles  the  First,  and  the  army  which  followed 
Washington.  Lampoons  and  pasquinades,  on  one  side 
of  the  question  or  the  other,  were  composed  for  the 
amusement  of  partisans  who  were  prudent  enough  never 
to  quit  their  own  chimney  corner.  But  the  hymns  which 
comforted  the  starving  shoeless  groups  around  the  camp- 
fires  at  Valley  Forge  might  have  been  sung  in  one  of 


400  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Massey's  guard-rooms  at  Gloucester,  or  by  a  party  of 
troopers  returning  from  the  pursuit  after  Naseby.1 

Those  sorry  scribblers  who  constituted  themselves 
exponents  of  loyalist  sentiment  vulgarised,  and  possibly 
exaggerated,  the  intolerance  and  the  prejudices  of  their 
patrons.  But  caste-feeling,  intense,  aggressive,  and  al- 
most universal,  beyond  any  doubt  prevailed  in  the  Tory 
society  of  America ;  and  it  was  terribly  and  quite  dis- 
proportionately punished.  There  are  benighted  parts 
of  the  world  where  injustice  and  oppression,  in  cruel 
and  practical  forms,  have  survived  through  the  ages  un- 
assailed  and  unquestioned ;  but  in  a  civilised  and  high- 
spirited  community  the  far  or  near  future  never  fails  to 
exact  retribution  from  those  who  have  caught  the  trick 
of  disdaining  and  disparaging  the  mass  of  their  country- 
men. When  once  the  British  flag  had  been  hauled 
down  from  the  roof  of  Province  House,  Boston  would 
be  no  place  for  those  who  had  hitherto  walked  the 
streets  as  favourites  of  the  Government  and  hereditary 
tenants  of  the  public  offices.  The  moment  had  come 
when  they  must  resign  credit,  and  power,  and  salary, 
and  all  that  constituted  "  the  life  that  late  they  led," 
to  men  whom  they  disliked  and  tried  hard  to  think  that 
they  despised.  They  abandoned  their  pulpits  and  count- 
ing-houses, their  pleasant  gardens  in  the  English  style, 
and  their  mansions  shaded  with  tall  poplars ;  and  the 
land  knew  them  no  more  by  sight  or,  after  a  while,  by 
name.  So  far  as  the  memory  of  them  even  in  their  own 
neighbourhood  was  concerned,  it  was  much  if  a  later 

1  Lessons  of  war  from  Him  we  take 
And  manly  weapons  learn  to  wield. 
Strong  bows  of  steel  with  ease  we  break, 
Forced  by  our  stronger  arms  to  yield. 

'Tis  God  that  still  supports  our  right. 
His  just  revenge  our  foes  pursues. 
'Tis  He  that  with  resistless  might 
Fierce  nations  to  His  power  subdues. 

The  "American  Soldier's  Hymn,"  quoted  by  Professor  Tyler  in  his  31st 
Chapter. 


THE  REFUGEES  40 1 

generation  pointed  out  their  old  home  as  a  house  which 
was  haunted  by  Tory  ghosts.1 

The  last  days  which  the  loyalists  of  Massachusetts 
passed  on  their  native  soil  were  disturbed  by  the  menace 
of  an  appalling  catastrophe.  The  artillerymen  of  the 
besiegers  now  had  Boston  at  their  mercy ;  and  General 
Howe  allowed  a  rumour  to  get  abroad  that,  if  his  troops 
were  harassed  during  their  embarkation,  he  should 
destroy  the  town.  The  Selectmen  of  the  municipality 
sent  a  flag  of  truce  across  the  lines,  and  implored  the 
American  Commander-in-Chief,  since  the  garrison  was 
unquestionably  on  the  eve  of  departure,  to  take  no  steps 
which  could  afford  an  excuse  for  the  consummation  of 
so  dreadful  a  threat.  From  an  official  point  of  view 
there  was  only  one  reply  to  such  an  appeal.  His  Ex- 
cellency (the  answer  ran)  could  take  no  notice  of  an 
unauthenticated  paper,  containing  assurances  which,  if 
accepted  at  the  American  headquarters,  did  not  in  any 
way  bind  the  British  General.  But  none  the  less  Wash- 
ington kept  his  guns  silent,  and  his  soldiers  within  their 
intrenchments  ;  and  the  preparations  for  the  removal  of 
the  British  army  went  steadily  and  securely  on.  It 
may  well  be  believed  that,  even  in  the  last  extremity, 
Howe  would  not  have  been  as  bad  as  his  word.  It 
might  be  argued  that  a  servant  of  the  Crown  was  under 
an  obligation  to  carry  out  his  Sovereign's  expressed 
wish,  and  use  "every  means  of  distressing  America." 
To  set  the  city  on  fire,  rather  than  it  should  be  the  seat 
of  Congresses  and  Committees  and  a  rallying  centre  for 
armed  insurgents,  was  presumably  within  the  letter  of 
the  Ministerial  instructions  and  most  assuredly  in  strict 
accordance  with  their  spirit.  Boston  was  only  waiting 
until  the  red-coats  were  gone  in  order  to  behave  quite 
as  rebelliously  as  Norfolk  or  Falmouth ;  but  it  did  not 
share  their  fate.  In  the  opinion  of  Howe  enough 
American  towns  had  been  offered  as  burnt  sacrifices 

1  Sabine's  Loyalists  :  vol.  ii.,  p.  357. 
2D 


402  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

upon  the  altar  of  personal  loyalty.  To  give  the  capital 
of  Massachusetts  to  the  flames  would  excite  horror 
throughout  Europe,  and  most  of  all  among  the  people 
who  had  been  his  own  political  associates  and  familiar 
friends.  He  could  not  stay  in  America  for  ever ;  and, 
if  he  returned  to  London  with  such  a  deed  on  his  fame 
and  conscience,  however  gracious  might  be  his  recep- 
tion at  the  Palace,  he  would  only  need  to  walk  half-way 
up  Saint  James's  Street,  and  enter  Brooks's  Club,  in 
order  to  discover  that  not  one  of  the  men  whose  respect 
and  good-will  he  most  valued  would  ever  take  his  hand 
again. 

Howe,  before  the  war  was  over,  had  done  some  cruel 
things,  and  from  carelessness  or  misplaced  good-nature 
had  excused  still  more  barbarous  conduct  in  others. 
But,  when  he  obeyed  his  better  instincts,  he  was  a 
good-natured  English  gentleman.  Lord  Dartmouth,  who 
was  something  much  better  than  good-natured,  had 
long  ago  written  to  desire  that,  if  Boston  fell,  all 
should  be  done  to  save  the  friends  of  the  Government 
from  the  worst  consequences  of  their  fidelity.  Howe 
addressed  himself  strenuously  to  the  task  of  mitigating 
the  hard  destiny  of  the  fugitives.  He  had  transports 
barely  enough  for  the  conveyance  of  the  army ;  and  it 
required  not  a  little  unselfishness  on  the  part  of  those 
responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the  embarkation  to  find 
room  for  the  loyalists,  their  families,  and  their  posses- 
sions. In  order  to  provide  storage  for  the  effects  of 
those  unfortunate  civilians,  the  military  left  behind  and 
lost  much  property  of  their  own  which  they  could  not 
pack  into  the  ships  and  which,  it  is  needless  to  say,  no 
patriot  could  just  then  be  found  to  buy.  The  exigencies 
of  duty  on  a  front  of  battle  lying  within  a  few  hundred 
yards  of  an  enterprising  and  elated  adversary  were  un- 
usually heavy  and  anxious ;  the  soldiers,  as  the  moment 
of  departure  approached,  were  with  difficulty  restrained 
from  drink  and  riot ;  and  it  is  to  the  honour  of  the 
British  officers  that  all  the  time  which  could  be  spared 
from  keeping  the  besiegers  in  respect,  and  preserving 


THE  REFUGEES  403 

discipline  in  barracks,  was  devoted  to  helping  those  who 
were  more  to  be  pitied  than  themselves. 

The  loyalists  were  by  no  means  in  all  cases  a  feeble 
folk.  Many  of  them  knew  the  water-side  of  old,  and 
had  secured  for  the  transportation  of  their  goods  the 
pick  of  such  labour  as  there  was  to  be  hired.  Some 
of  them  indeed  understood  very  well  how  to  help  them- 
selves, in  every  acceptation  which  the  words  would  bear. 
A  certain  Crean  Brush  had  been  noisy  and  noticeable 
among  the  Tories  who  remained  in  Boston  during  the 
siege.  He  was  not  a  native  of  the  city,  nor  of  the 
colonies.  Born  in  Dublin,  he  settled  himself  in  New 
York,  and  was  appointed  to  official  posts  which,  being 
before  his  age,  he  contrived  to  make  very  lucrative.  In 
an  unguarded  hour  Sir  William  Howe  had  given  him 
a  commission  to  impound,  and  to  place  on  board  the 
fleet,  all  the  linen  and  woollen  in  the  town.  Brush,  at 
the  head  of  some  violent  and  dishonest  partisans,  pro- 
ceeded to  break  open  stores,  shops,  and  dwelling-houses. 
Without  observing  any  distinction  in  the  nature  of  his 
spoils,  he  loaded  a  brigantine  with  a  cargo  of  stolen 
property  worth  a  hundred  thousand  dollars.  The  ex- 
ample was  followed  by  gangs  of  seamen  from  the  royal 
fleet,  ill-watched,  and  sometimes  encouraged,  by  their 
officers.  The  soldiers  could  not  always  be  kept  from 
emulating  the  sailors ;  and  for  some  days  and  nights 
the  city  presented  frequent  scenes  of  violence  and 
pillage.  It  was  high  time  to  go.  Vast  quantities  of 
public  stores  were  abandoned  to  the  enemy,  after  having 
been  damaged  as  effectually  as  could  be  done  by  people 
who  had  begun  to  count  their  stay  at  Boston  by  half- 
hours.  The  British  officers  sacrificed  all  except  the 
most  portable  of  their  private  baggage.  They  them- 
selves, huddled  up  amidst  a  miserable  throng  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages,  with  top-heavy  decks  and  encum- 
bered gangways,  put  to  sea  praying  for  a  quick  passage. 
The  scene,  according  to  the  historical  writer  in  the 
"Annual  Register,"  resembled  the  emigration  of  a  na- 
tion rather  than  the  breaking  up  of   a  garrison.     In 


404  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Benjamin  Hallowell's  cabin  "  there  were  thirty-seven 
persons,  —  men,  women,  and  children  ;  servants,  mas- 
ters, and  mistresses ;  obliged  to  pig  together  on  the 
floor,  there  being  no  berths."  Mr.  Hallowell,  nine 
months  previously,  had  been  hunted  into  Boston  by 
a  cavalcade  of  patriots ;  and  this  was  how  he  left  it. 
Such  are  the  lesser  miseries  of  a  Revolution. 

The  fleet  was  bound  for  Canada,  as  was  reported  both 
in  the  city  and  in  the  American  camp  ;  but  Washington 
thought  it  possible  that  the  British  staff  had  dissemi- 
nated the  story  for  a  blind.  He  apprehended  that  the 
real  destination  might  be  New  York,  and  made  his  dis- 
positions accordingly.  But,  when  the  leading  ships  had 
finally  threaded  the  islands  and  gained  the  open  sea, 
they  steered  for  Halifax  in  Nova  Scotia,  a  small  town 
on  an  inhospitable  coast,  where  the  passengers,  armed 
and  unarmed,  would  find  themselves  hardly  less  crowded 
and  uncomfortable  than  on  board  the  transports.  The 
reputation  of  the  quarters  towards  which  they  were  mov- 
ing was  expressed  vigorously  and  compactly  throughout 
the  convoy  by  means  of  the  proverb,  "  Hell,  Hull,  and 
Halifax."1  Some  of  the  royal  battle-ships  were  left  be- 
hind when  their  consorts  sailed ;  but  the  captains  did  not 
venture  to  remain  at  their  moorings  within  the  harbour. 
The  vessels  dropped  down  to  Nantasket  Road,  well  out 
of  harm's  way,  where  they  continued  for  another  two 
months,  much  to  the  annoyance  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Boston. 

That  was  the  only  cross  in  their  lot.  Every  patriot 
who  had  remained  within  the  walls  was  his  own  man 
once  again ;  and  the  patriots  in  the  camp  without  were 
impatient  to  learn  how  their  besieged  brethren  looked 
after  ten  months  of  hardship  and  (what  to  people  of 

1  It  was  an  old  Yorkshire  saying,  dating  from  our  Civil  War,  which  the 
British  officers  applied  on  the  present  occasion  to  the  Halifax  of  Nova 
Scotia.  "  A  cursed  cold  wintry  place,  even  yet ;  "  said  one  of  them  on  the 
17th  March.  "  Nothing  to  eat ;  less  to  drink.  Bad  times,  my  dear  friend. 
The  displeasure  I  feel  from  the  very  small  share  I  have  in  our  present  insig- 
nificancy is  so  great  that  I  do  not  know  the  thing  so  desperate  I  would  not 
undertake  in  order  to  change  our  situation." 


RESULT  OF  THE   CAMPAIGN  405 

their  nature  was  perhaps  as  trying)  of  taciturnity  and 
enforced  abstinence  from  public  affairs  and  from  com- 
mercial business.  While  Howe's  rearguard  were  push- 
ing off  their  boats  at  one  extremity  of  the  town,  General 
Putnam,  at  the  head  of  a  thousand  men  who  had  had 
the  smallpox,  entered  it  at  the  other. 1  Three  days 
afterwards,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the  danger  of 
infection  was  less  than  had  been  feared,  the  main  body 
of  the  American  army  marched  through  the  streets 
amidst  cheers  and  smiles  ;  although  it  was  observed 
that  the  faces  which  filled  the  windows  bore  marks  of 
hunger,  and  of  the  gloom  which  had  so  long  oppressed 
the  city. 

But  joy  had  returned,  and  abundance  with  it;  and 
both  the  one  and  the  other  had  come  as  permanent 
residents  and  not  as  passing  guests.  On  the  twenty- 
second  of  March  a  great  concourse  of  people  thronged 
into  Boston.  They  came  home  by  thousands,  to  find 
most,  but  not  all,  of  those  whom  they  had  left  there; 
and  we  are  told,  though  we  do  not  require  to  be  told, 
that  on  that  day  the  whole  place  was  in  tears  and 
laughter.  They  were  glad  once  more  to  roam  about 
their  beloved  town,  - —  their  Carthage  which,  in  spite  of 
the  Latin  quoted  at  Westminster,  after  all  was  not  to 
be  destroyed.  When  they  surveyed  and  reckoned  up 
their  losses,  they  enjoyed  the  surprise  of  finding  that  the 
waste  and  wreck  of  their  property  was  not  so  extensive 
as  seriously  to  spoil  their  pleasure.  Hancock's  fine  well- 
decorated  mansion  seemed  to  be  not  much  the  worse  for 
a  hostile  occupation.  "  The  town,"  Washington  wrote 
to  him,  "  although  it  has  suffered  greatly,  is  not  in  so 
bad  a  state  as  I  expected  to  find  it;  and  I  have  a  partic- 
ular pleasure  in  being  able  to  inform  you,  Sir,  that  your 
house  has  received  no  damage  worth  mentioning.  Your 
furniture  is  in  tolerable  order,  and  the  family  pictures 
are  all  left  entire  and  untouched."  When  the  President 
of  Congress  came  off  so  easily,  it  may  be  believed  that 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress :  Cambridge,  19  March,  1776. 


406  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

little  was  missing  out  of  habitations  which  presented 
fewer  temptations  to  the  marauder,  and  whose  owners 
exercised  less  prominent  and  invidious  functions.  Even 
those  old  wooden  dwellings  which  had  been  pulled  down 
for  fuel  were  pronounced  to  be  well  away  for  reasons 
connected  with  the  future  health  and  beauty  of  the 
town.  A  visit  prompted  by  eager  curiosity,  and  at- 
tended by  well-founded  satisfaction,  was  that  which  was 
paid  to  the  British  fortifications.1  Soldiers,  and  yet 
more  the  parents  and  wives  of  soldiers,  gazed  with 
shuddering  thankfulness  on  those  formidable  works 
which  it  had  cost  so  much  labour  to  erect,  and  so  little 
bloodshed  to  capture.  Doctor  John  Warren,  who  had 
repaired  to  the  spot  where  he  could  stand  as  close  to  his 
brother  as  was  now  possible  for  him,  has  left  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  fortress  which  Howe's  engineers  had  erected 
on  the  peninsula  of  Charlestown.  "  When  I  came,"  he 
wrote,  "  to  Bunker's  Hill  I  found  it  exceedingly  strong ; 
the  front  parapet  about  thirteen  feet  high  composed  of 
earth  contained  in  plank  supported  by  huge  timber." 
The  same  care  and  skill  had  been  bestowed  wherever 
they  were  required ;  and  Washington  reported  that 
every  avenue  to  Boston  had  been  fortified  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  town  was  almost  impregnable.  And 
yet, — by  dint  of  endurance,  and  self-control,  and  rigid 
reticence,  followed  by  strong  decision  and  sudden  action 
when  the  proper  moment  came,  —  he  had  made  that 
stronghold  his  own  at  an  expenditure  of  less  than  a 
score  of  New  England  lives. 

The  prizes  which  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors 

1  "  March  17.  This  morning  about  Nine  aclock  there  was  A  Larem  and 
our  people  went  into  the  boats  for  to  go  to  Boston.  General  Sulliven  With 
a  party  of  men  Went  to  Bunker  Hill  and  took  posesien  of  it. 

"  This  afternoon  I  went  Down  to  charlestown  neck  in  order  to  go  over 
to  Bunker  hill.     But  the  Sentinals  Stopt  me. 

"March  18.  This  morning  I  went  to  Bunker  Hill  and  Charlestown  For 
to  see  the  Ruens  of  the  Town. 

"  March  25.    I  cooked  this  day.     I  have  ben  up  bacon  Hill  this  day." 

And  so  at  last  David  How  got  into  Boston,  and  saw  the  view  from 
Beacon  Hill  on  the  North  of  the  Common,  —  the  site  where  the  State 
House  now  stands. 


RESULT  OF  THE   CAMPAIGN  407 

were  well  worth  securing.  Great  numbers  of  fine 
cannon  lay  about  in  the  batteries.  They  had  been 
spiked,  and  otherwise  mutilated ;  but  their  repair  was 
within  the  resources  of  an  army  containing  excellent 
blacksmiths,  among  the  best  of  whom  was  Nathaniel 
Greene,  the  second  best  of  the  generals.  There  were 
huge  piles  of  shot  and  shells,  and  a  great  quantity 
of  miscellaneous  stores.  Washington's  quartermaster- 
general  estimated  the  contents  of  the  magazines  at  some- 
thing between  twenty-five  and  thirty  thousand  pounds 
in  value.1  But  all  that  the  Americans  found  on  land 
was  insignificant  as  compared  with  what  they  captured 
at  sea.  Even  while  the  men  of  war  lingered  in  Nan- 
tasket  Road  an  armed  schooner  hailing  from  Marble- 
head  had  already  picked  up  a  store-ship  from  Cork, 
which  carried  fifteen  hundred  barrels  of  powder  in  her 
hold.  After  the  lapse  of  two  months,  in  consequence 
of  a  hostile  demonstration  by  the  Continental  army 
assisted  by  provincial  militia,  the  royal  squadron  took 
its  departure  from  the  scene.  An  imaginative  popula- 
tion, on  the  look-out  for  anniversaries,  pleased  itself  by 
remembering  that,  according  to  the  provisions  of  the 
Act  devised  by  the  British  Ministry  for  the  ruin  of 
Boston,  the  fourteenth  of  June,  1774,  had  been  the  latest 
date  for  trading  vessels  to  leave  or  enter  the  condemned 
harbour.  And  now  the  fourteenth  of  June,  1776,  was 
the  last  day  on  which  the  last  of  the  Ministerial  war- 
ships was  seen  in  Boston  waters.  Then  began  an  un- 
interrupted harvest  for  the  colonial  privateers.  They 
made  an  easy  prey  of  the  crazy  merchantmen  which,  as 
a  substitute  for  swift  frigates,  were  bringing  the  rein- 
forcements for  Howe's  army.  When  these  belated  and 
ill-adapted  vessels  at  length  reached  the  coast  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, the  royal  fleet  had  gone  for  good,  and  the 
whole  bay  between  headland  and  headland  was  alive 
with  American  cruisers.  Four  transports  were  capt- 
ured ;    and    the    Highland    soldiers    on   board    at    last 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress:  March  19,  1776. 


408  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

reached  their  destination,  but  reached  it  as  prisoners  of 
war.1  The  patriots  learned  with  a  satisfaction  which 
few  will  grudge  them  that  the  brigantine  chartered  by 
Crean  Brush  was  taken,  with  himself  and  all  his  booty 
on  board  of  her.  From  that  time  forward  his  life 
was  one  series  of  misfortunes,  until  it  came  to  a  bad 
end. 

In  their  relief  and  exultation  the  inhabitants  of  the  res- 
cued city  were  not  heedless  of  the  dangers  which  the 
future  might  have  in  store  for  them.  As  soon  as  the 
royal  sails  were  over  the  horizon,  Boston  began  to  take 
precautions  against  the  possible  contingency  of  their 
reappearance.  The  British,  on  the  eve  of  their  retire- 
ment, had  demolished  those  works  on  Castle  Island 
which  commanded  the  main  entrance  to  the  harbour ; 
and  the  municipal  authorities  now  applied  themselves 
vigorously  and  expeditiously  to  the  task  of  restoring  the 
ramparts.  Every  ablebodied  townsman  gave  two  days 
a  week  of  voluntary  labour,2  working  as  Themistocles, 
at  a  famous  crisis,  made  the  Athenians  work  on  the 
Long  Walls  which  led  from  their  city  to  the  Piraeus. 
Boston,  (to  use  a  good  old  military  term,)  was  soon  safe 
from  insult.  A  hostile  squadron,  whose  commander  was 
not  prepared  to  sacrifice  some  of  his  masts  and  a  large 
proportion  of  his  crews,  could  not  thenceforward  pene- 
trate except  in  a  thick  fog,  and  even  then  only  with 
much  better  pilots  than  the  class  of  New  England  mari- 
ners who  would  consent  to  hire  out  their  services  for 
such  a  purpose.  No  admiral  —  and  least  of  all  one  of 
those  political  admirals  whom  Sandwich  was  in  the  habit 


1  "  June  1 6.  This  morning  our  Privitesters  Spy  a  large  Brig  Bound  from 
Scotland  to  Boston  and  they  chased  Them  all  Day  and  at  Night  they  had  a 
Smart  fight  and  took  them. 

"June  17.  This  day  the  Prisoners  Ware  brought  to  Boston.  There 
being  upwards  of  200  Hilanders  besides  other  valuable  loading: 

"June  19.  This  morning  our  Priviteteres  took  a  Ship.  She  had  on 
board  112  Hilanders  with  a  Cuterments  all  fixed  for  war."  David  How's 
Diary  for  1776. 

2  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  America,  in  a  Series  of  Letters 
by  an  Officer.     London,  1 791.     Letter  XLVIII. 


RESULT  OF  THE   CAMPAIGN  409 

of  appointing  —  would  feel  comfortable  when  he  opened 
a  sealed  order  directing  him  to  place  his  ships  within 
cannon-shot  of  the  wharves  of  Boston. 

Making  reference  to  the  proceedings  of  the  English 
Ministry,  Frederic  of  Prussia,  as  was  not  unusual  with 
him,  employed  the  language  of  a  book  which  he  loved 
better  to  quote  than  to  read.  "  When  I  reflect,"  he 
said,  "  on  the  conduct  of  that  government  in  the  war 
with  their  colonies,  I  am  almost  tempted  to  say  what  the 
theologians  maintain  with  regard  to  Providence,  that 
their  ways  are  not  ours."  And  indeed  they  were  not. 
North  and  Sandwich  resembled  Frederic  as  war-ministers 
even  less  than  Gage  resembled  him  as  a  general,  or 
George  the  Third  as  a  monarch.  Bunker's  Hill  had  been 
a  soldier's  battle ;  but  the  responsibility  for  the  cam- 
paign of  which  it  formed  an  episode  lay  with  the  place- 
men and  their  Royal  master.  They  had  contrived 
among  them  to  bring  about  the  discomfiture  of  a  val- 
iant army,  responsive  to  discipline,  and  containing  more 
than  a  due  proportion  of  distinguished  or  promising  offi- 
cers. They  had  involved  it  in  almost  every  calamity 
which  could  befall  a  military  force,  except  disgrace. 
They  had  so  managed  matters  that,  in  a  region  over- 
flowing with  plenty,  their  troops  had  been  fed  from 
Leadenhall  Market,  as  an  orator  of  the  Opposition 
cleverly  and  not  untruly  put  it.1  Burke  was  reported 
to  have  said  that,  though  two  hundred  pounds  a  man 
had  been  spent  on  salt  beef  and  sour  crout,  our  garrison 
could  not  have  remained  ten  days  longer  in  Boston  un- 
less the  heavens  had  rained  down  quails  and  manna. 
And  yet,  much  as  the  English  had  suffered  during  the 
course  of  the  siege  from  the  scarcity  and  badness  of 
their  food,  in  the  last  resort  they  were  refused  the  com- 
parative satisfaction  of  having  yielded  to  famine,  and 
not  to  force.  The  Government  deprived  Howe  of  two 
thousand  infantry,  at  the  moment  when  he  most  needed 

1  The  phrase  was   Lord   Effingham's.      Parliamentary  History ;    vol. 
viii.,  p.  1350. 


410  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

to  be  strong.  The  reinforcements  which  were  sent  from 
home  to  fill  the  void  arrived  two  months  too  late ;  and 
so  it  came  to  pass  that  the  ill-used  General  was  in  the 
end  not  starved  but  manoeuvred  out  of  his  positions. 
The  acts  of  aggressive  warfare  sanctioned  or  condoned 
by  the  Ministers  were  as  futile  as  their  defensive  ar- 
rangements, and  had  consequences  most  disastrous  to 
the  national  interests.  They  had  not  occupied  a  single 
square  furlong  of  soil,  fortified  or  open,  in  any  of  the 
colonies ;  but  they  had  shelled  three  towns,  had  sent 
into  the  Gazette  a  score  of  loyal  merchants,  and  had  ren- 
dered a  few  hundred  families  homeless.  They  had 
alienated  all  the  neutral  opinion  in  America,  and  had 
lighted  a  flame  of  resentment  against  Great  Britain  which 
they  continued  to  feed  with  fresh  fuel  until  it  grew  so 
hot  that  it  did  not  burn  itself  out  for  a  couple  of  life- 
times. 

England  had  never  reaped  so  little  glory  or  advantage 
from  so  great  an  expenditure  of  money,  and  after  so 
much  preliminary  swagger  on  the  part,  not  of  the  peo- 
ple who  were  to  pay  or  the  soldiers  who  were  to  fight, 
but  of  the  statesmen  who  had  already  begun  to  blunder. 
Colonel  Barre,  in  a  speech  rich  with  traditional  know- 
ledge and  personal  observation  of  war,  declared  that 
this  unsuccessful  effort  to  keep  our  ground  in  one  small 
corner  of  our  own  empire  had  cost  the  Treasury  half  as 
much  again  as  the  operations  of  the  year  1704,  in  which 
our  armies  were  conquering  all  over  Europe  from  Blen- 
heim to  Gibraltar.  But  Barre  had  not  occasion  to  go 
outside  the  memory  of  the  youngest  of  his  audience. 
No  long  interval  had  elapsed  since  Warburg  and  Plassey, 
—  since  the  defeat  of  Montcalm,  the  conquest  of  Ha- 
vanna,  and  Hawke's  victory  off  the  coast  of  Brittany. 
But  during  that  interval  a  process  had  been  going  for- 
ward the  effects  of  which  were  now  manifest.  George 
the  Third  had  at  length  accomplished  his  purpose.  He 
had  rooted  out  frankness,  courage,  and  independence 
from  the  councils  of  the  State  ;  but  he  had  pulled  up 
along  with  them  other  qualities  which  his  policy,  when 


RESULT   OF  THE    CAMPAIGN  411 

brought  to  a  trial,  could  not  afford  to  dispense  with. 
His  Cabinet  was  now  exclusively  composed  of  men 
willing  to  pursue  ends  which  he  dictated,  but  incapa- 
ble of  discerning,  or  rightly  directing,  the  means  by 
which  alone  those  ends  could  be  attained. 


INDEX 


Abercrombie,  Colonel,  mortally 
v.'ounded  at  Bunker's  Hill,  335. 

Absentee  Irish  landlords,  rejection  of 
the  bill  for  taxing,  163, 164. 

Acland,  Captain,  attacks  Lord  North 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  260,  261 ; 
speaks  with  respect  of  the  military 
qualities  of  the  colonists,  273. 

Adam,  William,  allusion  to  his  duel 
with  Fox,  246. 

Adams,  John  (father  of  the  second 
President),  his  character  and  career, 
67,  67  n. 

Adams,  John  (second  President),  on 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  29 ;  his 
voyage  from  Boston  to  Bordeaux,  39; 
his  delineation  of  his  father's  charac- 
ter, 67  n. ;  his  studies,  68 ;  settles  as 
a  lawyer  at  Braintree,  68 ;  Sewall's 
estimate  of  him,  68;  details  of  his 
career,  69,  70;  declines  the  post  of 
Advocate-General,  71 ;  on  American 
provincial  taverns,  97;  disapproves 
attempts  to  kindle  hatred  between 
the  Boston  people  and  English  sol- 
diers, 108;  defends  Captain  Preston 
and  secures  his  acquittal,  121 ;  wins  a 
case  against  a  Custom-house  officer, 
131 ;  his  description  of  Admiral  Mon- 
tagu's wife,  132 ;  on  the  coercion  of 
Boston,  141 ;  a  delegate  to  the  Con- 
gress at  Philadelphia,  205 ;  declines 
to  take  principal  part  in  the  annual 
celebration  of  the  Boston  Massacre, 
296  n. ;  proposes  Washington  as  com- 
mander-in-chief, 341 ;  on  the  Liberty 
Tree,  352  n. ;  loyalist  estimate  of  him, 
396. 

Adams,  Mrs.  John  (wife  of  the  second 
President),  her  love  of  poetry,  97. 


Adams,  John  Quincy  (sixth  Presi- 
dent), 97. 

Adams,  Samuel,  drafts  a  Petition  to  the 
King,  34;  a  Calvinist,  81;  his  ar- 
gument against  a  standing  army  in 
time  of  peace,  118  ;  one  of  the  com- 
mittee on  the  Boston  Massacre,  120  ; 
instigates  the  formation  of  Commit- 
tees of  Correspondence,  134;  reads 
the  Hutchinson  letters  to  the  Massa- 
chusetts Assembly,  172 ;  at  the  anni- 
versary of  the  Boston  Massacre,  296 ; 
excepted  from  pardon  by  Gage's 
proclamation,  318. 

Advertisement,  Franklin's,  in  the 
"  Pennsylvanian  Gazette,"  76  n. 

Albemarle,  Lord,  278. 

America,  fabulous  statistics  concerning 
her  commerce,  40 ;  Burke's  estimate 
of  its  white  population  at  the  revolu- 
tion, 52 ;  character  of  its  taverns,  54 ; 
contributions  to  the  wealth  and  power 
of  Great  Britain,  92 ;  land-owning  in, 
93 ;  social  conditions,  94 ;  good  liv- 
ing, 94;  servants,  95;  equality  of 
means  and  absence  of  privilege, 
96;  early  marriages,  96;  status  of 
women,  97;  the  Bar  in,  103;  falling 
off  in  imports  subsequent  to  Town- 
shend's  taxation,  104;  action  and 
votes  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly 
pronounced  treasonable,  105 ;  effect 
produced  by  the  partial  repeal  of 
the  Townshend  duties,  124;  com- 
merce and  manufactures,  125-127; 
enmity  to  the  claims  of  the  revenue, 
129-131 ;  supplied  with  smuggled 
goods  from  the  Continent,  136; 
reception  of  the  Ministry's  new  Tea- 
duty  scheme,  137  ;  Franklin's  efforts 


413 


414 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


in  her  behalf,  168 ;  more  coercive 
legislation,  177-185 ;  demonstration 
against  Port  Act,  201 ;  aid  to  Boston, 
201 ;  proposal  of  a  Congress,  203 ; 
the  whole  continent  follows  Boston 
in  resistance,  203;  warlike  prepara- 
tions, 253,  254 ;  inadequacy  of  the 
British  force  in,  285;  formation  of  a 
navy,  361 ;  adoption  of  a  national  flag, 
380.  See  also  under  Americans  and 
the  various  entries  of  provinces. 

American  Soldier's  Hymn,  400;?. 

Americans,  their  delight  at  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  28 ;  the  Tea-duty 
imposed  on  them,  31 ;  their  course 
of  action  on  the  announcement  of 
the  new  taxation,  34 ;  combination 
against  the  use  of  British  manu- 
factures, 36 ;  their  English  Gov- 
ernors, 43 ;  observations  of  foreign- 
ers on  them  and  their  towns,  52; 
their  manners  contrasted  with  those 
of  the  English,  56;  qualities  of,  57; 
influence  of  their  antecedents  and 
circumstance  of  their  character,  60; 
their  love  for  George  the  Third, 
86-88  ;  reasons  for  the  concentration 
of  their  loyalty  upon  the  Throne, 
88 ;  high  opinion  of  the  Earl  of 
Chatham,  90;  their  aid  in  the  over- 
throw of  the  French  in  America,  90 ; 
moral  effects  of  the  revolutionary  war 
upon,  92;  early  marriages  among, 
96;  deference  shown  by  them  to 
women,  97 ;  testimony  of  foreigners 
to  the  virtues  of  their  women,  98 ; 
political  capacity  and  addiction  to 
the  study  of  law,  102;  relations  of 
English  and  colonial  officers  in  the 
war  against  the  French,  no;  Lord 
Sandwich's  calumnious  anecdote  of 
their  behaviour  at  Louisburg,  270; 
rights  as  combatants  recognised  by 
exchange  of  prisoners,  315;  refuta- 
tion of  the  charge  against  them  of 
scalping  the  wounded,  315  ;  effect  of 
Gage's  proclamation  on,  318,  319. 
See  also  under  provincial  entries. 

Amherst,  Sir  Jeffrey,  his  character 
as  a  soldier,  279 ;  his  quarrel  with 


the  Court,  279;  declines  to  serve 
against  the  Americans,  280. 

Anglomania,  58. 

Annapolis,  burning  of  the  Peggy 
Stewart   tea-ship   at,   253. 

Army  officers,  British,  of  the  present 
day  and  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
109 ;  relations  with  colonial  officers 
during  the  French  war  in  America, 
no,  in  ;  life  in  garrison,  114. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  wounded  at  Quebec, 
382 ;  at  the  capture  of  Ticonderoga, 
385. 

Bancroft,  Mr.  (historian),  on  the 
blockade  of  Boston,  192 ;  quoted, 
82,  82  «.,  312. 

Barclay,  Mr.,  in  unofficial  peace  nego- 
tiations with  Franklin,  276. 

Barnes,  Mr.,  of  Marlborough,  shelters 
Gage's  officers,  306;  proscribed  and 
banished,  306  n. 

Barre,  Colonel,  for  the  repeal  of  the 
Townshend  Act,  123;  commends 
the  impartiality  of  American  tribu- 
nals, 180;  treatment  by  the  House, 
182;  on  the  cost  of  the  American 
War,  410. 

Barrington,  Lord  (Secretary  at  War), 
his  expressed  judgment  on  the 
dispute  with  America,  and  on  what 
should  be  the  conduct  of  the  war 
contrasted  with  his  action,  143  ;  ideas 
of  ministerial  responsibility,  143 ; 
his  paper  on  the  home  army,  384; 
opposes  the  expedition  to  the  Caro- 
linas,  385. 

Bath,  account  of,  by  Smollett,  46. 

Bathurst,  Lord  Chancellor,  19  11. 

Beattie,  Dr.,  his  panegyric  on  Lord 
Dartmouth,  276. 

Beauchamp,  Lord  (Constable  of  Dub- 
lin Castle),  49. 

Bedford,  Duke  of,  a  bishopric  solic- 
ited of  him  by  Dr.  Markham,  157. 

Bedfords,  the,  their  American  policy, 
37;  ideas  of  ministerial  discretion, 
142. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  173. 

Bernard,   Sir    Francis    (Governor    of 


INDEX 


415 


Massachusetts),  light  thrown  by  his 
letters  on  the  proceedings  which 
alienated  America,  43 ;  his  propo- 
sitions and  advice,  43,  44;  has  the 
popular  leaders  at  his  mercy,  107. 

Bolingbroke,  Lord,  reminds  Selwyn 
of  his  duties  as  a  borough  member, 
225,  226. 

Borough  members,  their  conception 
of  their  parliamentary  position,  223, 
225. 

Boroughs,  pocket,  21,  216,  223. 

Boston  (Mass.),  increase  of  garrison 
and  men-of-war  at,  38 ;  in  1768,  70 ; 
motives  for  its  military  occupation, 
101,  105 ;  feeling  caused  in,  by  the 
Resolutions  charging  Massachu- 
setts Assembly  with  treasonable  acts 
and  votes,  106 ;  the  town  Whig, 
the  army  ultra-Tory,  109;  towns- 
folk exclude  the  military  from  social 
intimacy,  112;  English  testimony 
to  the  merits  of  the  townspeo- 
ple, 115;  appellation  of  "Boston 
Saints,"  115;  moral  repugnance  to 
license  and  rioting,  115;  animosity 
between  the  rougher  patriots  and  the 
British  rank  and  file,  116;  Council 
refuses,  under  statute,  to  find  quar- 
ters or  supplies,  118 ;  garrison  in 
hired  houses,  118 ;  bills  found  against 
British  officers  for  slander,  119 ;  the 
Massacre,  119 ;  aim  of  popular  lead- 
ers and  anger  of  population,  120; 
citizens  appoint  a  Committee  of 
Public  Safety,  120;  conference  of 
delegates  with  Lieutenant-Governor, 
Council,  and  officers  of  army  and 
navy,  120;  promise  of  withdrawal  of 
garrison  to  Castle,  120 ;  trial  and  ac- 
quittal of  Captain  Preston,  121 ;  the 
patriots  invite  all  the  townships  to 
establish  Committees  of  Correspond- 
ence, 134;  its  reception  of  the  tea- 
ship,  138 ;  bill  for  closing  its  har- 
bour and  transferring  its  custom- 
house to  Salem,  177;  consternation 
of  citizens  on  hearing  their  port  is  to 
be  closed,  190;  British  ideas  of  its 
population,  191 ;  appeals  to  the  As- 


semblies of  the  Colonies,  191 ;  block- 
ade of  the  harbour,  192  ;  troops 
return  to  the  town,  192;  the  As- 
sembly at  Salem,  193;  Governor's 
secretary  proclaims  dissolution  of 
Assembly,  193 ;  delegates  appointed 
for  a  Continental  Congress,  193 ; 
offers  of  gratuitous  wharfage  from 
Marblehead  and  Salem,  194;  action 
with  regard  to  town-meetings,  196 ; 
opening  of  the  remodelled  courts  of 
justice,  196 ;  aid  from  the  other  col- 
onies, 202;  Washington's  offer,  203; 
reprisals  of  the  patriots  for  Gage's 
raid  on  Cambridge,  289  ;  British  rule 
dead  outside  Boston  Neck,  290;  an- 
niversary of  the  Massacre,  and  be- 
haviour of  the  garrison  officers  at  its 
celebration,  296;  mechanics  strike 
work  at  the  barracks,  298  ;  the  Com- 
mittee of  Correspondence  as  figured 
by  "Massachusettensis,"  299;  belief 
of  the  royalists  in  a  triumphant  issue, 
300;  fighting  quality  of  the  British 
garrison,  300;  the  inhabitants  by 
agreement  permitted  to  enter  or  re- 
move from  the  town,  315 ;  another 
increase  of  the  garrison,  316 ;  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,  322-334;  return  of  the 
British  dead  and  dying  from  Bunker's 
Hill,  337;  colonial  forts  thrown  up 
to  surround,  343 ;  want  of  food  and 
of  fuel,  350,  351;  Liberty  Tree  cut 
down,  352 ;  destruction  and  desecra- 
tion of  churches,  353  ;  moral  deterio- 
ration of  the  garrison,  353,  354  ; 
scurvy  and  small-pox  in,  354 ;  Faneuil 
Hall  converted  into  a  theatre,  356 ; 
daring  activity  of  the  boats  manned 
by  New  England  fishermen,  359 ; 
disastrous  voyage  of  the  ships  carry- 
ing supplies  to  the  garrison,  364; 
Bunker's  Hill  strongly  fortified  by 
the  British,  375  ;  the  Tories  distribute 
the  King's  speech  among  the  be- 
siegers, 380  ;  Congress  empowers 
Washington  to  make  an  assault, 
even  if  town  and  property  be  de- 
stroyed, 381 ;  Dorchester  Heights 
occupied  by  the  colonials,  390;  de- 


416 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


spondency  of  the  garrison,  392;  en- 
forced emigration  of  non-combatant 
loyalists,  394  ;  evacuated  by  the 
British,  and  entrance  of  colonial 
army,  403 ;  stores  left  behind  in  the 
city,  406,  407 ;  preparations  against 
the  reappearance  of  the  British,  408. 

Boswell,  James,  his  opinion  of  Henry 
Dundas,  268  n. 

Bouffleurs,  Chevalier,  59. 

Bowes,  Stoney  (the  original  of  Barry 
Lyndon),  221  n. 

Bows  and  arrows  in  warfare,  374. 

Braddock,  General,  his  attack  on  Fort 
Duquesne,  78. 

Bribery  Act,  operation  of,  220. 

Brooks's  Club,  24,  25,  105. 

Brush,  Crean,  his  behaviour  in  Boston 
on  the  evacuation,  403;  capture  of 
him  and  his  booty,  408. 

Buchan,  Lord,  his  manly  letter,  214. 

Bunker's  Hill,  occupation  of,  by  the 
colonists,  322 ;  redoubt  bombarded 
bv  the  fleet,  323 ;  character  of  the 
defences,  325 ;  number  of  the  colo- 
nists, 326;  attacked  by  the  British 
under  Howe,  327;  the  American 
artillery  badly  served,  327;  repulse 
of  the  first  attack,  328 ;  the  second 
attack  also  repulsed,  329  ;  failure 
of  reserves  in  aid  of  defenders, 
333;  success  of  the  third  assault, 
334 ;  losses  of  the  defenders  and  the 
assailants,  334,  336,  337 ;  dangers  of 
the  retreat,  335;  moral  results  of 
the  event,  339-341. 

Burgoyne,  General,  would  convince 
America  by  persuasion  rather  than 
by  the  sword,  183;  Elton's  attempt  to 
"trot"  him,  183  n. ;  sent  to  support 
Gage,  284;  is  a  dangerous  subordi- 
nate, 316;  corresponds  from  Boston 
with  Ministers  at  home,  317 ;  his  ex- 
posure of  Gage's  mistakes,  317  ;  liter- 
ary tastes,  318 ;  exposes  to  Ministers 
the  dangers  of  the  military  situation, 
319-321 ;  in  command  of  the  batter- 
ies at  Bunker's  Hill,  332;  criticism 
of  the  troops  in  action,  336;  his 
opinion   of   the   British  position  at 


Boston,  337;  accused  of  the  dese- 
cration of  South  Chapel,  Boston, 
353 ;  hates  flogging,  355 ;  a  splendid 
disciplinarian,  355;  tries  to  divert 
the  monotony  of  the  siege,  356 ; 
summoned  back  to  England,  357; 
his  reply  to  Washington's  remon- 
strance on  the  treatment  of  his  offi- 
cers, 358 ;    on  Admiral  Graves,  360. 

Burgoyne,  Sir  John,  on  the  British 
soldier  at  trench  or  field  work,  389  71. 

Burke,  Edmund,  on  the  apathetic  atti- 
tude of  the  English  public,  21 ;  his 
estimate  of  the  white  population  of 
the  American  colonies,  52;  close  ob- 
servation of  the  Americans,  102;  on 
George  Grenville's  taxation  policy, 
105 ;  criticism  of  the  Duke  of  Graf- 
ton, 122 ;  ridicules  English  fears  of 
American  commercial  competition, 
125  ;  his  account  of  the  Rockingham 
administration,  152;  merits  and  de- 
fects which  disqualified  him  from  be- 
ing titular  head  of  a  great  party,  156 ; 
his  reply  to  Dr.  Markham's  censure, 
158 ;  relations  with  Lord  George 
Germaine,  159 ;  his  energy  and  party 
influence  in  both  Houses,  159; 
on  the  Middlesex  election,  162  n. ; 
averse  to  parliamentary  reform, 
162;  letter  to  North  on  the  tax- 
ation of  Irish  landlords,  163 ;  re- 
futes Lord  Caermarthen's  analogy 
of  unrepresented  Manchester  and 
America,  181 ;  treatment  by  the 
House,  183 ;  his  splendid  oration  on 
the  repeal  of  the  Tea-duty,  187; 
letter  to  Lord  Rockingham  on  elec- 
toral matters,  218;  invited  to  repre- 
sent Bristol,  219;  his  statement  to 
the  electors,  219;  on  the  shortening 
of  Parliaments,  227  ;  discourages  the 
Opposition  scheme  of  non-attend- 
ance, 232 ;  his  bill  to  secure  the 
colonies  against  parliamentary  taxa- 
tion and  to  repeal  obnoxious  laws, 
244;  his  attack  on  patent  places, 
247  ;  believes  that  if  business  men  in 
England  had  interfered  there  would 
have   been   no   war  with  America, 


INDEX 


W 


252;  letter  to  a  New  York  gentle- 
man probably  written  by  him,  252 n.  \ 
on  the  New  England  fishery  bill, 
268. 

Burns,  Robert,  on  the  American  war 
and  its  authors,  234. 

Byles,  Dr.  (of  Boston),  his  prudent 
behaviour  as  a  loyalist,  200. 

Byron,  quoted,  100,  247. 

Caermarthen,  Lord,  on  American 
taxation  without  representation,  181. 

Cambridge  (Mass.),  first  establish- 
ment of  a  public  school  at,  60;  can- 
non and  stores  at,  seized  by  Gage, 
287 ;  patriots  force  Oliver  to  resign, 
288 ;  resolutions  passed  by  the  in- 
habitants, 288. 

Camden,  Lord,  against  the  Tea-duty, 
123 ;  on  English  class  feeling  in  the 
American  crisis,  252. 

Campbell,  Lord,  on  Lord  Bathurst, 
19  n. 

Carlisle,  Earl  of,  extravagance  of,  10; 
anecdote  regarding,  12;  sea-voyag- 
ing, 39;  his  wife's  smuggling  chair- 
man, 128  ;  Manuscripts  of,  242  n. ; 
Selwyn's  friendship  for,  243 ;  surety 
for  Charles  and  Stephen  Fox's  debts, 

243- 

Carolinas,  the,  effects  of  revolutionary 
war  on,  92 ;  failure  of  the  expedition 
against,  385. 

Castle  Howard,  n,  12. 

Cavendish,  Lord  John,  Walpole's  esti- 
mate of,  23 ;  his  hunting,  160 ;  on 
the  fishery  bill,  269. 

Cerberus,  the,  and  the  Major-Generals, 
316. 

Champion,  Mr.  (a  constituent  of 
Burke's),  252. 

Chandler,  Clark  (Registrar  of  Probate 
at  Worcester,  Mass.),  forced  to  erase 
an  unpatriotic  record  he  had  made, 
197. 

Charlemont,  Lord,  his  distrust  of  the 
sanctity  of  the  Post  Office,  170. 

Charles  the  First,  cited,  365. 

Charleston,  its  reception  of  the  tea- 
ship,  138. 

2E 


Charlestown,  burned  during  the  fight 
on  Bunker's  Hill,  332. 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  his  great  influence 
in  the  State,  32 ;  knowledge  of  and 
love  for  the  Americans,  90 ;  esteem 
in  which  he  was  held  by  them,  90; 
urges  the  King  not  to  oppose  the 
genuine  desire  of  the  Commons  of 
Ireland  to  tax  absentee  Irish  land- 
lords, 163;  his  statesmanship  in  old 
age,  165;  on  parliamentary  reform, 
165;  varying  power  of  his  oratory, 
166;  bitterly  prejudiced  against  the 
Rockingham  party,  166;  high  opin- 
ion of  Franklin,  168 ;  forebodings 
concerning  India  and  America,  185  ; 
his  kindly  estimate  of  Fox,  186; 
opinion  of  the  resolutions  of  the  first 
Congress,  208 ;  regards  the  colo- 
nials as  compatriots,  237;  his  mo- 
tion in  the  Lords  to  prevent  civil 
war,  238 ;  awakes  the  resentment  of 
the  Whigs  by  his  proposed  abandon- 
ment of  the  abstract  right  to  tax 
America,  238  ;  great  speeches  on  the 
subject  in  the  Lords,  239;  regards 
the  conflict  with  America  as  a  civil 
war,  241 ;  thanks  young  Lord 
Granby  for  his  vindication  of  the 
colonists,  272 ;  cultivates  the  society 
of  Franklin,  275 ;  presents  a  bill  for 
settling  the  troubles  in  America,  277 ; 
shields  Franklin  from  Sandwich's 
attack,  277. 

Churchill,  Charles  (poet),  cited,  48. 

Civil  War,  the  English,  after  effects  of, 
92. 

Clare,  Lord,  his  friendship  for  Frank- 
lin, 57  n. 

Clarke,  Lieutenant  (Royal  Marines), 
his  account  of  the  fight  at  Bunker's 
Hill,  328,  328  71. 

Clergy,  loyalist,  their  treatment  by  the 
patriots,  200,  396. 

Clinton,  Governor,  induced  by  Frank- 
lin to  contribute  guns  to  the  defence 
of  the  Delaware,  78. 

Clinton,  Major-General,  sent  to  sup- 
port Gage,  283;  at  Bunker's  Hill, 
330;  despatched  to  the  Carolinas, 


4i8 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


384;  failure  of  his  attack  on  Charles- 
ton, 385. 

Clive,  Lord,  his  parliamentary  influ- 
ence, 161 ;  cited,  278. 

Coffin,  General  John,  his  opinion  of 
the  effect  of  the  fight  at  Bunker's 
Hill,  340. 

Coke,  Mr.  (of  Norfolk),  his  position 
as  a  county  member,  224. 

Committees  of  Correspondence  to 
guard  chartered  rights,  134. 

Concord,  Congress  at,  292;  Gage's 
attempt  to  destroy  the  stores  at, 
306. 

Congress,  the,  at  Philadelphia,  its  res- 
olutions, 206;  prohibits  the  slave 
trade,  207 ;  its  appeal  to  all  true  and 
kindly  Englishmen,  207;  Chatham 
on  its  Resolutions,  208 ;  forms  a 
fleet  and  a  naval  organisation,  363 ; 
interferes  with  army  matters,  391. 
See  also  Philadelphia. 

Connecticut,  aid  given  by,  in  war  with 
the  French  in  America,  90;  good 
living  in,  95 ;  manufactures  of,  126 ; 
aid  to  Boston,  203  ;  full  of  fight,  203 ; 
its  fleet,  362 ;  its  army,  370 ;  behaviour 
of  its  Militia  in  Washington's  army, 
372;  but  afterwards  furnishes  the 
largest  contingent  except  that  of 
Massachusetts,  378. 

Conway,  General,  against  the  Tea- 
duty,  123,  124;  retires  from  office, 
141,  142;  asserts  the  impartiality  of 
American  tribunals,  180;  treatment 
by  the  House,  182. 

Cooper,  Dr.,  letter  to  Franklin  on  the 
acquittal  of  the  soldiers  tried  for  the 
Boston  Massacre,  134. 

Cornwall,  smuggling  in,  129. 

Cornwallis,  Lord,  with  Clinton  in  the 
attack  on  Charleston,  385. 

County  members,  their  standing  and 
qualifications,  224,  225;  what  their 
electors  expected  from  them,  226; 
their  consciousness  of  responsibility, 
226. 

Cowper,  William  (poet),  quoted,  on 
English  social  vices,  48 ;  with  John 
Newton    at   Olney,    146,    147;    em- 


ployed in  religious  teaching,  148 ; 
his  health  gives  way,  148. 

Cradock,  Joseph,  his  anecdote  of  Chat- 
ham, 165,  166. 

Crawford,  John,  the  younger,  of  Au- 
chinanes.his  record  of  experience  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  214. 

Crebillon,  cited,  12. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  refuses  to  discourage 
the  infant  commerce  of  America,  130. 

Cruger,  Mr.,  Burke's  colleague  in  the 
representation  of  Bristol,  220. 

Currency,  difference  in  value  between 
English  and  American,  94. 

Curwen,  Samuel,  on  London  and  its 
dissipation,  47  n. ;  on  the  weakness 
of  the  Opposition  to  the  North  Min- 
istry, 154. 

Cushing,  Thomas  (Speaker  of  the 
Massachusetts  Assembly),  letter  to, 
from  Franklin,  on  the  sentiments  of 
the  English  people  concerning 
America,  135. 

Dartmouth  College,  New  Hamp- 
shire, 149. 

Dartmouth,  Lord  (Secretary  of  State 
in  charge  of  America),  letter  to  him 
on  Cornish  smuggling,  129 ;  smooths 
over  the  affair  of  the  Gaspee,  134; 
religious  enthusiasm,  144;  relations 
with  Wesley,  145 ;  assists  Lady  Hun- 
tingdon, 145 ;  John  Thornton  aids 
him,  145,  146;  obtains  the  curacy  of 
Olney  for  John  Newton,  146;  letter 
from  Newton  respecting  his  house, 
146-tf. ;  learns  on  what  grounds  Wilkes 
is  prayed  for  at  Olney,  147 ;  receives 
news  of  Cowper's  failure  of  health, 
148 ;  his  breadth  of  charity  and 
ardour  of  religious  convictions,  149 ; 
benefactions  to  Dartmouth  College, 
New  Hampshire,  149 ;  invites  the 
co-operation  of  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, 149;  colonial  appreciation  of, 
150,  151 ;  wise  attitude  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  Hutchinson  letters,  172; 
despatches  Bibles  and  copies  of  the 
Port  Act,  by  the  same  ship,  190; 
Lord  Buchan's  letter  to  him  on  the 


INDEX 


419 


election  of  peers  for  Scotland,  214 ; 
the  King's  high  opinion  of  him,  276 ; 
regards  the  work  of  the  unofficial 
negotiators  for  peace  favourably,  277  ; 
requests  the  Lords  to  give  due  con- 
sideration to  Chatham's  bill  for  set- 
tling the  troubles  in  America,  277 ; 
withdraws  his  support  of  that  bill, 
277. 

Davis's  "  Travels  in  America,"  39  n. 

Declaratory  Act  of  1766,  30,  238. 

De  Fleming,  Sir  Michael,  story  con- 
cerning, 62. 

De  Fonblanque,  Edward  Barrington, 

356«- 
Delaware,  aspect  of,  52,  53. 
Devonshire,  Duke  of,  154. 
Devonshire,  smuggling  in,  129. 
Dickinson,    John,     of    Pennsylvania, 

author  of  "Farmer's   Letters,"  34, 

254. 

Dodd,  Dr.,  65;?. 

Dorchester,  promontory  of,  commands 
Boston,  383 ;  occupied  by  the  Ameri- 
cans, 388  ;  Nook's  Hill  fortified,  393. 

Dudingston,  Lieutenant,  his  conduct 
in  command  of  the  Gaspee,  132; 
that  conduct  approved  by  his  Admi- 
ral, 133 ;  his  vessel  burnt  by  local 
fishermen,  133. 

Dumas,  Mathieu,  his  impressions  of 
America,  53;  distinction  between 
English  and  American  manners,  56. 

Dundas,  Henry  (Lord  Advocate  for 
Scotland),  career  of,  268;  personal 
appearance  and  character,  268 ;  his 
speech  on  the  restrictive  fishery  bill, 
268 ;  attempts  to  explain  away  his 
language,  269. 

Dunmore,  Lord  (Governor),  orders 
the  destruction  of  Norfolk,  367. 

Durham,  Bishop  of  (Lord  Barrington's 
brother),  his  theory  of  ministerial 
responsibility,  143. 

Dutch,  the,  as  domestic  servants  in 
America,  95  n. 

East  India  Company,  on  verge  of 
bankruptcy,  135 ;  its  handsome  treat- 
ment by  the  Home  Government,  136 ; 


the  Directors  advise  the  Ministry  to 
repeal  the  Tea-duty  as  a  sure  relief 
to  the  Company's  embarrassments, 
136 ;  allowed  a  drawback  of  the  Tea- 
duty  payable  in  England,  137;  its 
agents  appointed  to  receive  the  tea- 
ships  at  American  ports,  138  ;  Frank- 
lin's offer,  277. 

Election  petitions,  reform  in  the  trial 
of,  210. 

Eliot,  Mr.,  seats  Gibbon  in  a  Cornish 
borough,  223. 

Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert,  his  political  emi- 
nence, 261 ;  comes  to  the  rescue  of 
the  Ministry,  262. 

Ellis,  Welbore,  opposes  North's  Reso- 
lution, 260. 

Elton,  James,  his  attempt  to  draw 
Burgoyne,  183  n. 

Emerson,  Rev.  William  (of  Concord), 
on  the  colonial  camps,  345,  347,  348. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  quoted,  58 ; 
his  oration  at  Dartmouth  College, 
69. 

English  people,  the,  their  indifference 
to  politics  in  1775,  21 ;  indifference 
regarding  events  in  remote  countries, 
40 ;  character  of  their  colonial  offi- 
cials, 41 ;  personal  habits  and  char- 
acter of  their  statesmen,  45  ;  official 
and  political  jobbery,  49,  50;  national 
manners  contrasted  with  those  of 
the  Americans,  56 ;  the  middle  class, 
59;  Franklin's  admiration  of,  167. 
See  Great  Britain. 

Eton  College,  story  concerning,  62; 
laxity  of  discipline  at,  63 ;  the  Foxes' 
influence  on,  63;  Latin  and  elocu- 
tion at,  63. 

Falmouth  (Mass.),  bombarded,  365. 

"  Farmer's  Letters,"  Dickinson's,  34. 

Fielding,  Henry  (novelist),  cited,  55. 

Fifth  Fusiliers,  at  Bunker's  Hill,  334. 

Fifty-second  Regiment,  at  Bunker's 
Hill,  327. 

Fitzpatrick,  Richard,  his  friendship 
with  Fox,  8 ;  Fox's  companion  in 
extravagance,  10;  letters  from  Fox, 
12,  13  ;  gambling  with  him,  244. 


420 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


Flogging,  in  the  British  army,  held  in 
abhorrence  by  Americans,  117;  Eng- 
lish and  foreign  feeling  concerning, 
118  n. ;  in  Boston  garrison,  355. 

Foote,  Samuel,  his  play  of  the 
"Cozeners"  quoted  on  the  Bribery 
Act,  212. 

Fort  Duquesne,  Braddock's  attack  on, 
78,  84;  Washington's  successful  ex- 
pedition against,  84. 

Forty-third  Regiment,  at  Bunker's  Hill, 

327. 

Forty-seventh  Regiment,  at  Bunker's 
Hill,  327. 

Fothcrgill,  Dr.,  in  peace  negotiations 
with  Franklin,  276. 

Fothringham,  Mr.,  on  colonial  soldiers' 
clothing,  372  n. ;  on  the  contem- 
porary impression  produced  by 
Bunker's  Hill,  339. 

Fox,  Charles  James  (son  of  Lord  Hol- 
land), his  character  and  career,  1 ; 
his  father  releases  him  and  his  brother 
Stephen  from  debt,  4 ;  helps  in  the 
investigation  of  his  own  and  his 
brother's  debts,  5;  amendment  in 
his  conduct  consequent  on  self-re- 
proach, 6;  friendship  with  Richard 
Fitzpatrick,  8 ;  his  nephew's  (Lord 
Holland)  lines  respecting,  8;  his 
correspondence,  9 ;  process  by  which 
he  squandered  his  money,  10; 
letters  to  Fitzpatrick,  11,  13;  his 
judgment  of  books,  12 ;  travelling  on 
the  Continent,  13 ;  passages  from 
his  letters  in  French,  14,  15;  letters 
to  his  mother,  15-17;  feeling  as 
to  past  errors  and  promises  of 
reform,  16;  gratitude  to  his  father, 
17 ;  loyal  adherence  of  his  brother 
Stephen  to  him,  18,  188 ;  kindly 
manner  in  which  he  regarded  the 
birth  of  Stephen's  son,  18  n.\  effect 
of  Stephen's  death  upon  him,  18, 
19;  divorces  himself  from  Minis- 
terialists, 20 ;  received  with  open 
arms  by  the  Rockinghams,  24;  im- 
provement in  his  habits,  24;  effect 
of  the  American  controversy  on  his 
future,  27 ;  influence  on  his  school- 


fellows when  at  Eton,  63;  per- 
suaded that  Latin  is  best  taught  at 
Eton,  63 ;  in  opposition  to  the  North 
Ministry,  155,  160;  uncomplimen- 
tary and  friendly  estimates  of  his 
conduct,  186;  subjects  on  which  he 
spoke  in  the  House,  187;  on  the 
Tea-duty,  188;  proves  himself  the 
potential  master  of  the  House,  189 ; 
powerless  to  thwart  the  Government 
measures,  189 ;  his  bet  with  Sir 
George  Macartney  on  the  dissolution 
of  Parliament,  210;  letter  to  Lord 
Ossory,  215;  election  to  Malmes- 
bury,  216;  secures  an  ideal  electoral 
position,  218 ;  his  titles  to  rank  as 
an  aristocrat,  228 ;  denounces  the 
closing  of  the  gallery  while  Ameri- 
can official  correspondence  is  read, 
230;  looks  on  the  conflict  with 
America  as  a  civil  war,  241 ;  his 
splendid  energy  and  enthusiasm  in 
the  war  with  France  and  Spain,  241 ; 
reconciles  his  fidelity  to  a  political 
creed  with  duty  to  his  country,  242 ; 
suffers  in  reputation  from  Sehvyn's 
close  attention  to  his  habits  and 
mode  of  life,  243;  his  higher  attri- 
butes gain  him  the  love  and  respect 
of  his  party,  244;  his  society  sought 
by  Gibbon,  245 ;  Dr.  Johnson's  dec- 
laration concerning,  246 ;  his  merits 
his  own,  his  faults  due  to  his  educa- 
tion, 246;  his  later  life,  passionate 
love  of  the  country,  249 ;  his  recep- 
tion of  his  nephew's  suggestion  of  a 
London  house,  249, 250 ;  views  on  the 
French  Revolution,  250 ;  his  amend- 
ment to  the  Address  praying  the  King 
to  suppress  rebellion  in  the  colonies, 
255 ;  space  allotted  to  his  speech  in 
the  Parliamentary  History,  256,  257; 
satisfied  with  the  division  on  his 
amendment,  257 ;  North  acknow- 
ledges his  power  by  borrowing  his 
ideas  on  colonial  exemption  from 
taxation,  258  ?i. ;  his  tactical  use  of 
Lord  North's  new  proposal,  258 ; 
powerful  speech  on  the  restrictive 
fishery  bill,  267  ;  regrets  the  apparent 


INDEX 


421 


invincibility    of  military    discipline, 
287. 

Fox,  Mrs.  Charles  James,  12. 

Fox,  Stephen  (brother  of  Charles 
James),  Lord  Holland's  efforts  to 
release  him  from  debt,  4 ;  his  loyalty 
to  his  brother  Charles,  188 ;  speech 
on  the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  188 ; 
becomes  a  peer,  189;  death,  18, 189. 

Fox,  Stephen  (Fox's  grandfather),  228. 

Francis,  Philip,  letters  from  his  brother- 
in-law  Mackrabie  concerning  Amer- 
ica, 93,  94  n.,  96,  104,  114;  on  the 
Rockingham  party,  164 ;  on  legislat- 
ing for  America,  181. 

Franklin  (Benjamin  Franklin's  father) , 
augury  of,  80. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  his  gifts  to  his 
family  on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, 
28 ;  re-publishes  John  Dickinson's 
"  Farmer's  Letters,"  34 ;  on  American 
coercion,  37 ;  on  length  of  time  taken 
in  sea  voyages,  38 ;  on  English 
indifference  to  what  passes  in  remote 
countries,  40,  41 ;  on  English  colo- 
nial governors,  43  ;  his  popularity  in 
polite  circles,  58 ;  his  reception  by 
Lord  Clare,  57  n. ;  domestic  details 
concerning,  72;  ancestors,  72;  emi- 
gration of  his  father  to  Massachusetts, 
72 ;  uncles,  73  ;  early  life,  73  ;  decides 
on  becoming  a  printer,  73 ;  self- 
denial  and  hard  study,  74;  train- 
ing as  a  logician,  74 ;  the  friends  of 
his  poverty,  75,  76 ;  in  business  as  a 
stationer  and  printer,  76 ;  his  energy 
and  creativeness,  76 ;  improvements 
he  effected  in  Philadelphia,  jj  ;  pro- 
motes the  building  of  a  meeting- 
house free  to  all  preachers,  jj  ; 
excites  the  patriotism  of  Pennsyl- 
vania in  1744  in  the  war  with  France, 
yj  ;  induces  Governor  Clinton  to 
contribute  guns  to  the  defence  of 
the  Delaware,  78 ;  organises  the 
transport  and  commissariat  of  Brad- 
dock  in  the  attack  on  Fort  Duquesne, 
78  ;  entrusted  with  the  defence  of  the 
North-West  frontier,  78 ;  a  Colonel 
of  Militia,  78 ;  appointed  Joint  Post- 


master-General of  America,  79 ;  his 
politic  methods  of  doing  business,  79 ; 
influence  through  his  newspaper,  79 ; 
fulfils  to  the  letter  his  father's  augury, 
80;  his  catalogue  of  virtues,  80;  his 
high  opinion  of  George  the  Third, 
87;  on  social  conditions  in  Scot- 
land and  Ireland,  93;  on  wages  in 
America,  94;  on  early  marriages, 
96 ;  his  account  of  American  manu- 
factures, 126;  on  smuggling,  128; 
on  the  sentiments  of  the  English 
people  regarding  America,  135 ; 
his  view  of  the  English  Ministry's 
new  scheme  concerning  the  Tea- 
duty,  137;  qualifications  for  being 
a  mediator  between  England  and 
America,  167;  his  love'for  the  mother- 
country,  167 ;  forwards  Hutchinson's 
private  letters  to  the  Speaker  of  the 
Massachusetts  Assembly,  169;  his 
letters  intercepted  at  the  English 
Post  Office,  171 ;  presents  a  petition 
for  the  removal  of  Hutchinson  and 
Oliver,  172  ;  his  demeanour  and 
dress  during  its  discussion,  174; 
on  forwarding  complaints  of  griev- 
ances, 193 ;  his  friendship  with  Stra- 
han,  217 ;  doubts  the  use  of  a  House 
of  Commons,  222;  isolated  life  after 
his  dismissal  from  the  Postmaster- 
ship,  274;  his  society  cultivated  by 
Chatham,  275 ;  and  by  Rear-Admiral 
Lord  Howe,  275 ;  conducts  in  concert 
with  Mr.  Barclay  and  Dr.  Fothergill 
an  unofficial  negotiation  for  settling 
difficulties  between  Britain  and  her 
colonies,  276  ;  attacked  by  Sand- 
wich, 277;  offers  to  pay  the  East 
India  Company  for  its  tea,  277 ; 
failure  of  his  efforts  with  Barclay 
and  Fothergill,  278 ;  sails  for  Phila- 
delphia, 278  ;  on  the  burning  of 
Charlestown,  367 ;  advocates  the  use 
of  bows  and  arrows,  374,  379  ; 
computes  the  time  and  expense 
necessary  to  kill  all  American  rebels 
and  to  conquer  their  territory,  381. 

Franklins,  the  (uncles  to  Benjamin),  72. 

Frederic  the  Great,  his  French  verse, 


422 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


14;  cited,  32;  believes  money  to 
be  the  mainspring  of  the  British 
Constitution,  222;  does  not  forgive 
George  the  Third's  desertion,  237 ; 
his  astonishment  at  the  reason  for 
men-of-war  not  being  employed  in 
the  conveyance  of  troops,  384 ;  opin- 
ion of  the  conduct  of  the  British 
Ministry  in  the  American  war, 
409. 

French,  the,  share  of  the  colonists  in 
their  overthrow  in  America,  90,  91 ; 
their  intervention  in  the  war  between 
England  and  America,  241. 

French  Revolution,  the,  250. 

Freneau,  Philip,  his  Litany,  132  n. 

Gage,  General,  compelled  to  hire 
houses  in  Boston  for  the  garrison, 
118  ;  prejudices  the  King  against  the 
colonists,  177 ;  arrives  in  Massachu- 
setts Bay  with  powers  as  civil  gov- 
ernor of  the  colony  and  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  continent,  191 ;  procla- 
mation against  town-meetings,  195 ; 
the  new  councillors  report  to  him  the 
disordered  condition  of  the  province, 
196 ;  the  judges  represent  to  him  the 
futility  of  officiating  at  their  tribunals, 
197 ;  project  of  superseding  him 
changed  to  supporting  him  with  able 
generals,  280;  his  proclamation 
against  hypocrisy,  286 ;  advises  the 
suspension  of  the  Penal  Acts,  286; 
seizes  cannon  and  stores  at  Cam- 
bridge, 287;  discharges  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Assembly,  291; 
despatches  officers  to  sketch  the 
roads  in  Suffolk  and  Worcester, 
303-305 ;  fails  to  destroy  the  military 
stores  at  Concord,  306;  increase  of 
his  forces,  316;  injury  done  to  his 
reputation  by  Burgoyne,  317;  his 
proclamation  denouncing  the  rebels, 
319;  the  major-generals  urge  him  to 
action,  321 ;  determines  to  occupy 
Dorchester  Heights,  321 ;  his  opinion 
of  the  colonials  after  Bunker's  Hill, 
340;  recall  to  England,  357;  his 
reply,  drafted  by  Burgoyne,  to  Wash- 


ington's remonstrance  on  the  treat- 
ment of  his  officers,  358. 

Garden,  Alexander,  his  testimony  to 
the  attachment  of  the  Americans  to 
England,  88. 

Gaspee  (the  schooner),  conduct  of  its 
lieutenant,  133 ;  burnt  by  local  fisher- 
men, 133. 

"Gentleman's  Magazine,"  quoted,  43; 
on  the  humane  treatment  by  colonists 
of  English  wounded,  315  n. 

George  the  Third,  the  causes  which 
made  him  effectively  master  of  the 
State,  20;  hostile  to  American  con- 
ciliation, 30;  by  means  of  the  King's 
Friends  hampers  the  King's  Minis- 
ters, 30 ;  utilises  Pitt  against  Rocking- 
ham, 31 ;  induces  fresh  taxation  on 
America,  31,  33;  leaves  unanswered 
Petition  from  the  Massachusetts 
Assembly,  34;  approves  coercive 
legislation  on  America,  38 ;  ill-served 
by  his  governors  and  lieutenant- 
governors,  43 ;  character  of  the  states- 
men in  whom  he  reposed  confidence, 
45 ;  his  system  of  personal  govern- 
ment, 85 ;  career  of  an  aspirant  to 
office  under  that  system,  85;  esteem 
in  which  he  was  held  by  the  Ameri- 
cans, 86-88  ;  Franklin's  high  opinion 
of  him,  87 ;  determined  to  stand  on 
his  extreme  rights,  102;  dictates 
Lord  North's  line  on  the  Tea-duty, 
123;  entreats  Granby  to  remain  in 
the  Ministry,  141 ;  Lord  North  con- 
fesses to  him  his  belief  that  the  Gov- 
ernment policy  will  end  calamitously, 
142;  opposed  to  the  tax  on  absentee 
Irish  landlords,  164;  reads  letters 
passing  through  the  Post  Office,  169 ; 
receives  address  from  the  Massachu- 
setts Assembly  on  the  case  of  Hutch- 
inson and  Oliver,  172  ;  General  Gage 
gives  him  a  poor  opinion  of  Bosto- 
nians,  177  ;  rejoices  at  the  passing  of 
the  Penal  Acts,  185 ;  his  remarks 
about  the  Opposition,  185;  disap- 
proves of  Grenville's  Electoral  Peti- 
tion statute,  211,  212;  fondness  for 
electoral  details,  213;   arranges  the 


INDEX 


423 


list  of  Scottish  representative  peers, 
214;  has  the  names  of  the  new 
members  at  the  1774  election  tabu- 
lated, 222;  his  efforts  to  keep  Wilkes 
out  of  Parliament,  229,  230 ;  White- 
head's counsel  to  him  in  a  birthday 
ode,  234 ;  is  glad  that  the  quarrel  with 
the  colonies  cannot  be  patched  up, 
236;  his  warlike  promptings  purely 
political,  237;  his  reception  of  the 
Corporation  of  London's  address  on 
the  restrictive  fishery  bill,  265 ;  high 
opinion  of  Lord  Dartmouth,  276; 
proposes  to  supersede  Gage  and 
make  Amherst  commander-in-chief, 
280;  on  Amherst's  refusal  sends 
three  major-generals  to  support 
Gage,  280;  treatment  of  great  sol- 
diers, 281 ;  his  reception  of  Gage's 
recommendation  to  withdraw  the 
Penal  Acts,  286;  recalls  Gage  and 
gives  the  command  to  Howe,  357; 
would  concur  in  any  plan  to  dis- 
tress America,  365;  copies  of  his 
speech  of  1776  disseminated  in  the 
colonial  camp,  380;  despatches  an 
expedition  to  the  Carolinas,  385. 

Georgia,  effects  of  revolutionary  war 
on,  92 ;  no  manufactures  in,  126. 

Germaine,  Lord  George,  parliamen- 
tary relations  with  Burke,  159;  on 
the  bill  for  coercing  Massachusetts, 
178. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  his  experiences  of 
Oxford,  65 ;  on  masquerades,  202  n.  ; 
sits  for  a  Cornish  borough,  223 ;  on 
the  time  necessary  to  qualify  for  a 
county  member,  225;  seeks  the 
society  of  Fox,  245;  estimate  of 
Fox's  character,  245;  prepares  for 
a  debate,  256. 

Gower,  Lord  (President  of  the  Coun- 
cil) ,  12 ;  for  the  retention  of  the  Tea- 
duty,  123;  supports  but  disapproves 
of  North's  policy,  143. 

Grafton,  Duke  of,  32;  First  Lord  of 
the  Treasury,  37 ;  Chancellor  of 
Cambridge  University,  64;  charac- 
ter and  career  of,  122;  endeavours 
to  redeem  his  past,  122;  earnestly 


recommends  the  abolition  of  the 
Tea-duty,  123;  resigns  his  post  as 
premier  but  retains  the  Privy  Seal, 
140;  refuses  to  sit  in  the  Cabinet, 
140. 

Granby,  Marquis  of,  against  the  Tea- 
duty,  123  ;  the  dark  side  to  his  brilliant 
career,  141 ;  resists  the  entreaties  of 
the  King  to  remain  in  the  Ministry, 
141 ;  death,  141. 

Granby,  Marquis  of,  son  of  the  above, 
member  for  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge, 272;  his  vindication  of  the 
colonists,  272. 

Grant,  Mrs.,  of  Laggan,  quoted,  398  n. 

Grantham,  Lord,  170. 

Graves,  Admiral  Samuel,  spikes  guns 
which  bear  upon  his  ships,  290;  in- 
efficiency of,  360,  361 71. ;  deprived  of 
his  command,  361. 

Graves,  Admiral  Thomas,  raised  to  the 
peerage,  361  n. 

Great  Britain,  ruling  caste  in,  61 ;  con- 
dition of  its  great  public  school,  63; 
the  University  career  in,  65 ;  inns  of, 
65 ;  residence  in,  the  goal  of  a  col- 
onist's aim,  88;  value  of  American 
trade  to,  92;  moral  effects  of  civil 
war  upon,  93 ;  her  commercial  pros- 
perity injured  by  Townshend's  taxa- 
tion, 104;  desire  of  the  commercial 
classes  for  a  policy  of  indulgence 
and  consideration  towards  America, 
124;  American  and  English  com- 
merce and  manufactures  contrasted, 
125,126;  smuggling,  127,  128 ;  indis- 
position to  coerce  the  colonies,  135 ; 
feeling  in,  at  the  news  of  the  treat- 
ment of  the  tea-ships,  139 ;  Franklin 
appeals  to  her  statesmen  for  fairness 
to  America,  168  ;  ultimately  involved 
in  war  with  four  powerful  nations  by 
the  passing  of  the  four  Penal  Acts 
against  America,  184 ;  spectacle  of  its 
power  pitted  against  that  of  Boston, 
191 ;  public  feeling  in  1774  on  the 
American  trouble,  251-253. 

Greene,  Nathaniel,  early  days  of,  82; 
his  love  and  study  of  the  military 
life,  313;  appointed  Commander-in- 


424 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


Chief  of  the  Rhode  Island  army, 
313  ;  his  skill  as  a  mechanic  407. 
Grenville,  George,  resents  the  repeal  of 
the  Stamp  Act,  29 ;  hostile  to  concil- 
iation with  America,  30 ;  opposed  to 
the  partial  repeal  of  the  Customs 
duties,  124;  his  Election  Petitions 
Bill,  211,  214. 

Hackman,  Rev.  Mr.,  65  n. 

Halifax,  Lord,  his  scheme  for  planting 
bishops  in  America,  144. 

Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  404. 

Hallowell,  Benjamin  (Commissioner 
of  Customs),  197,  404. 

Hamilton,  Alexander  (American  pa- 
triot), 81. 

Hancock,  John,  one  of  the  committee 
on  the  Boston  Massacre,  120;  mem- 
ber of  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  292 ;  at  the  Boston  Massacre 
anniversary,  296 ;  excepted  from  par- 
don by  Gage's  proclamation,  318; 
loyalist  opinion  of,  395. 

Hancock,  Thomas  (uncle  of  John 
Hancock),  makes  a  fortune  by  im- 
porting contraband  tea  from  Hol- 
land, 131. 

Hardwicke,  Lord,  condidate  for  the 
High  Stewardship  of  Cambridge 
University,  65. 

Harlow,  George,  his  letter  to  Sir 
Michael  de  Fleming,  craving  ad- 
vancement, 62. 

Harris,  Captain  (afterwards  Lord  Har- 
ris of  Seringapatam),  his  eagerness 
to  fight  the  colonials,  321 ;  wounded 
at  Bunker's  Hill,  324. 

Hawke,  Admiral  Sir  Edward,  against 
the  Tea-duty,  123;  retires  from 
office,  140,  142. 

Heath,  General,  at  Lexington  fight, 
308 ;  his  commissariat,  314 ;  on  the 
little  damage  done  by  the  old  artil- 
lery, 388  ?i. ;  applauds  the  prudence 
of  Washington  in  not  assaulting 
Boston,  392. 

Henry,  Patrick,  at  the  first  Congress, 
223. 

Hertford  College,  65. 


Hertford,  Lord  (Master  of  the  Horse), 
49. 

Highway  robbery  in  1774,  218. 

Hillsborough,  Lord,  his  answer  to  the 
Massachusetts  circular  letter,  35  ;  for 
the  retention  of  the  Tea-duty,  123. 

Holland,  Lady  (Fox's  mother), 
Charles's  letters  to,  15-17;  death 
of,  18. 

Holland,  Lady  Mary  (Fox's  brother 
Stephen's  wife),  daughter  of  the 
Earl  of  Upper  Ossory,  and  sister  to 
Richard  Fitzpatrick,  18. 

Holland,  Lord  (father  of  Fox),  res- 
cues his  sons  Charles  and  Stephen 
from  their  heavy  debts,  4,  243 ;  Fox's 
gratitude  to  him,  17;  death  of,  18; 
his  servants  engaged  in  smuggling, 
128;  Selwyn's  opinion  of  him,  243; 
relieves  his  sons'  friends  from  obliga- 
tions incurred  in  their  behalf,  243. 

Holland,  Lord  (Fox's  nephew),  birth 
of,  18  ;  his  lines  on  Fox,  8 ;  similarity 
of  their  natures,  8 ;  makes  over  the 
Fox  MSS.  to  the  late  Earl  Russell, 
8 ;  suggests  that  Fox  should  take  a 
London  house,  249. 

Hollis,  Thomas  (English  antiquary 
and  art  collector),  his  testimony  to 
the  qualities  of  the  people  of  Boston 
and  Massachusetts  Bay,  115. 

Holmes,  Wendell,  verses  of,  on  Britain, 
168  n. 

Holroyd,  Mr.  (afterwards  Lord  Shef- 
field), his  complaint  that  smuggling 
cramps  agriculture  in  Sussex,  128 ; 
Gibbon's  advice  to,  in  qualifying  for 
a  county  member,  225. 

Hopkins,  Stephen  (Chief  Justice  of 
Rhode  Island),  refuses  to  sanction 
the  arrest  of  the  burners  of  the 
Gaspee,  133. 

Home  Tooke,  John,  on  English  social 
life,  47. 

House  of  Commons,  electoral  repre- 
sentation in,  in  1775,  21,  22;  origin 
of  the  party  which  fought  the  battle 
of  Liberal  principles,  22,  23;  repeals 
the  Stamp  Act,  28  ;  imposes  the  Tea- 
duty  on  America,  31 ;  address  to  the 


INDEX 


425 


King  that  colonists  charged  with  trea- 
sonable acts  be  tried  in  England, 
105  ;  Resolutions  moved  by  the  Min- 
istry that  the  Massachusetts  Assem- 
bly had  by  its  acts  and  votes  been 
guilty  of  treason,  105;  those  Resolu- 
tions passed,  106;  the  repeal  of 
duties  levied  in  America,  except 
tea,  under  Tovvnshend's  Act  moved, 
122 ;  debate  on  the  Tea-duty,  123 ; 
cessation  of  debate  on  the  Ameri- 
can controversy  for  a  term  of  three 
years,  127;  conduct  of  the  Whig 
party  in  Opposition,  152-164;  bill 
introduced  for  closing  Boston  har- 
bour, 177;  bill  for  the  Impartial 
Administration  of  Justice  in  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  179 ;  bill  for  removing 
legal  difficulties  in  billeting,  184; 
the  above  measures  placed  on  the 
statute-book,  184 ;  share  of  the  Oppo- 
sition in  the  blame  for  the  passing 
of  these  Acts,  184;  constitution  of, 
at  the  election  of  1774,  220;  borough 
and  county  members,  223 ;  contrast 
between  obligations  of  borough  and 
county  members,  225,  226;  the 
county  members'  dislike  of  place- 
men, 227;  vote  of  the  county  mem- 
bers on  the  disastrous  influence  of 
the  Crown,  227 ;  effect  of  good  speak- 
ing in  Parliament,  228;  meeting  of 
Parliament  in  1774,  229 ;  demand  of 
Opposition  for  official  correspond- 
ence relating  to  America,  229; 
scheme  of  non-attendance,  232 ;  dis- 
astrous reports  of  colonial  governors 
presented  to,  233 ;  Burke's  bill  against 
colonial  taxation  and  obnoxious  laws, 
245;  disposition  to  take  America 
seriously,  255 ;  Fox's  amendment  to 
Lord  North's  motion  to  take  meas- 
ures for  suppressing  rebellion  in  the 
colonies,  255 ;  numbers  in  the  divi- 
sion on  Fox's  amendment,  257  ;  Lord 
North's  Resolution  that  American 
colonies  voting  money  for  stated 
public  purposes  should  be  exempted 
from  British  taxation,  258 ;  scene 
after  Fox's  speech   on  the  Resolu- 


tion, 260 ;  bill  for  excluding  the  New 
England  colonies  from  certain  fish- 
ing grounds,  263 ;  bill  for  restraining 
colonial  trade  and  commerce,  266. 

How,  David,  of  Haverhill,  on  Colonel 
Prescott  at  Bunker's  Hill,  324;  on 
the  preparation  of  ammunition  in 
camp,  331  n.\  account  of  the  traffic 
in  the  cantonments,  346  n. ;  on  flog- 
ging in  the  colonial  camp,  348  n. ;  on 
the  last  days  of  the  siege  of  Boston, 
393  n. ;  his  entry  into  Boston,  406  n. ; 
on  the  capture  by  the  Americans  of 
British  transports,  407. 

Howe,  Lord,  his  friendly  treatment  of 
colonial  troops,  no;  his  death,  no. 

Howe,  Major-General  William,  char- 
acter and  career  of,  282;  sent  to 
support  Gage,  282;  in  command  of 
troops  at  Bunker's  Hill,  324 ;  captures 
the  Hill  on  his  third  attack,  330;  ef- 
fects of  the  British  losses  in  the  fight 
on  his  mind,  338 ;  appointed  Com- 
mander-in-Chief at  Boston,  357 ;  sees 
that  Boston  is  useless  as  a  base  of 
operations,  382 ;  and  determines  to 
evacuate  it,  382;  reasons  for  not 
occupying  Dorchester  promontory, 
384 ;  Clinton's  expedition  to  the  Car- 
olinas  deprives  him  of  two  thousand 
men,  384;  his  opinion  of  the  Ameri- 
can fortifications  on  Dorchester 
promontory,  389;  a  storm  prevents 
his  assaulting  them,  391 ;  determined 
to  save  the  army  and  evacuate  Boston, 
393;  the  fortification  of  Nook's  Hill, 
393;  permits  a  rumour  to  circulate 
that  he  will  destroy  Boston  if  he  is 
harassed  during  his  embarkation, 
401 ;  addresses  himself  strenuously 
to  the  mitigation  of  the  hard  fate  of 
the  loyalists,  402. 

Howe,  Rear-Admiral  Lord,  seeks 
Franklin's  acquaintance,  275. 

Hume,  David,  cited,  41  «.,  285. 

Huntingdon,  Lady,  assisted  by  Lord 
Dartmouth  in  her  religious  schemes, 

145- 
Hutchinson,    Thomas    (Governor    of 
Massachusetts),  inflames  the  minds 


426 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


of  the  home  authorities  against  his 
colony,  169  ;  his  letters  forwarded  by 
Franklin  to  the  Assembly,  169;  peti- 
tion for  his  removal,  172,  173. 
Hyde,  Lord  (Chancellor  of  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster),  in  communication 
with  Franklin,  275. 

Ireland,   as    seen   by  Franklin,  93, 

167. 
Irish   Ministry,  action  in  the  bill  for 

taxing  absentee  Irish  landlords,  163, 

164. 
Irish  Parliament,  rejection  of  that  bill, 

163,  164. 

Jamaica,  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of 
losing  the  American  trade,  265. 

James  the  First,  confers  upon  New 
England  settlers  exclusive  privileges 
of  fishing,  263. 

James  the  Second,  one  of  the  causes 
which  led  to  his  downfall,  100  ;  cited, 
194. 

Jefferson,  the  leading  lawyer  in  Vir- 
ginia, 81. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  Fox's  intimacy 
with,  25;  his  reply  to  Lord  Ches- 
terfield, cited,  157;  congratulates 
electors  that  a  claim  to  a  seat  in 
Parliament  will  be  scrutinised  with 
the  same  scrupulousness  as  any 
other  title,  211 ;  on  the  victory  of 
Wilkes,  231 ;  opinion  of  Whitehead 
the  Poet  Laureate,  234;  declares 
"  The  King  is  my  master,  but  Fox 
is  my  friend,"  246. 

Johnson,  Mr.  (of  Connecticut),  on  the 
good  feeling  of  his  colony  towards 
the  mother-country,  127. 

Johnstone  (Governor  of  Florida), 
prophesies  that  coercion  will  pro- 
duce revolt  and  confederacy,  183; 
space  allotted  to  his  speeches  in  the 
Parliamentary  History,  256. 

Junius,  on  the  American  question,  35. 

King's  Friends,  the,  124,  262. 
Knox,  Colonel,  presents  Washington 
with  siege  artillery,  386. 


LAFAYETTE,  his  impressions  of  Amer- 
ica 53.  54  !  standing  in  society,  56  ; 
testimony  to  the  merits  of  American 
women,  98. 

Latin  at  Eton,  63,  64. 

Lawrence,  Major  (Clive's  old  chief), 
278. 

Lecky,  Mr.,  quoted,  on  the  King's 
friends,  31 ;  on  the  commercial  rela- 
tions between  England  and  the 
American  colonies,  130  n. 

Lee,  Major-General  Charles,  on  politi- 
cal feeling  in  the  army,  109;  his 
account  of  the  warlike  preparations 
in  America,  253  ;  organising  the  colo- 
nial forces,  347;  advocates  the  use  of 
pikemen,  374. 

Lee,  Richard  Henry  (patriot),  loyalist 
opinion  of,  395. 

Leslie,  Colonel,  failure  of  his  endeavour 
to  seize  artillery  at  Salem,  302. 

Letters,  tampered  with  at  the  English 
Post  Office,  169-171. 

Lexington,  the  affair  of,  306-311. 

Ligonier,  Lord,  his  letter  to  Lord 
Granby,  142  ?i. 

"  Lives  of  the  Lord  Chancellors,"  Lord 
Campbell's,  quoted,  19  n. 

Lloyd,  Major-General,  his  recommen- 
dation on  the  use  of  pikes,  375  n. 

London  Gazette,  its  account  of  the 
scalping  of  English  wounded  by  the 
colonists  refuted,  315,  315  n. 

Lords,  House  of,  protest  on  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  30.     See  Ministry. 

Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  the  Revoca- 
tion of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  101. 

Louisburg,  first  siege  of,  270,  271 ; 
second  siege  of,  117. 

Ludgershall,  price  of  its  double  seat, 
223. 

Lynedoch,  General  Lord,  his  treatment 
by  the  King,  281. 

Macartney,  Sir  George,  on  Lord 
North's  administration,  154;  his  bet 
with  Charles  Fox  on  the  dissolution 
of  Parliament,  210. 

Macaulay,  Mrs.  Catharine,  her  History 
esteemed  by  the  Whigs,  41  n. 


INDEX 


427 


Macaulay,  Thomas   Babington,  cited, 

Mackrabie,  Alexander  (brother-in-law 
of  Philip  Francis),  inquires  who 
"  Junius  "  is,  93  ;  his  offer  to  Francis 
of  cheap  land  in  Maryland,  94;  on 
American  servants,  95  71. ;  on  mar- 
riage and  social  life  in  America,  96 ; 
on  colonial  rejection  of  goods  ex- 
ported from  England,  104;  on 
George  Grenville,  104,  105;  descrip- 
tion of  English  officers'  garrison  life 
in  America,  114. 

Magdalen  College,  65. 

Mahan,  Captain,  on  the  conduct  of 
New  Englanders  at  the  capture  of 
Cape  Breton  Island,  271  n. ;  on  Eng- 
lish admirals,  360  n. 

Malmesbury,  Lord,  at  Merton,  65. 

Manchester,  Duke  of,  urges  Rocking- 
ham not  to  break  with  Chatham,  238. 

Manly,  Captain  (of  the  Lee),  first  com- 
modore of  the  American  fleet,  363  ; 
captures  a  royal  ordnance  brig,  378. 

Marblehead,  custom-house  at,  191 ; 
fishermen  of,  192. 

Markham,  Dr.  (Bishop  of  Chester), 
his  character,  157;  terms  used  to 
the  Duke  of  Bedford  in  begging  a 
bishopric,  157  ;  censure  of  Burke  for 
his  presumption,  157 ;  Burke's  letter 
of  reply  to  that  censure,  158. 

Marshfield,  fate  of  the  Loyal  Militia  at, 
302,  303. 

Maryland,  price  of  land  in,  94 ;  manu- 
factures of,  126;  joins  Boston,  253. 

Mason,  his  poetical  satire  on  the  Rock- 
ingham party  in  Opposition,  160; 
commends  the  poet  Whitehead  for 
his  sound  counsel  to  the  King,  234. 

Massachusetts,  the,  Assembly,  its  peti- 
tion to  the  King,  34;  addresses  a 
circular  letter  to  American  Assem- 
blies, 35 ;  Lord  Hillsborough's  an- 
swer to  it,  35 ;  proposition  of  Governor 
Bernard  that  it  be  deprived  of  its  As- 
sembly, 43  ;  advance  of  education  in, 
60 ;  aid  to  the  British  in  the  war  with 
France  in  America,  90;  the  acts  and 
votes  of  its  Assembly  moved  by  the 


English  Ministry  to  be  treasonable, 
105  ;  its  manufactures,  126  ;  willing  to 
let  its  quarrel  with  the  mother-coun- 
try subside,  127 ;  in  consequence  of 
the  affair  of  the  Gaspee  the  English 
Cabinet  arrange  that  its  judges  shall 
be  paid  by  the  Crown,  134;  forms 
Committees  of  Correspondence  to 
guard  chartered  rights,  134;  sympa- 
thy of  a  large  section  of  the  English 
people  with  its  constitutional  resist- 
ance, 135 ;  Franklin  forwards  the 
Hutchinson  letters  to  her  Assembly, 
169;  the  Assembly  insists  on  them 
being  read,  172 ;  and  votes  that  their 
design  was  to  subvert  the  constitu- 
tion, 172;  the  Assembly  addresses 
the  King,  requesting  him  to  remove 
Hutchinson  and  Oliver  from  office, 
172;  calumnies  on  its  people,  176; 
its  charter  threatened,  178-180,  188 ; 
sends  delegates  to  the  Congress  at 
Philadelphia,  193 ;  new  councillors 
appointed  to  the  townships,  194;  and 
intimidated  into  resigning  office,  195  ; 
town-meetings  proclaimed,  195 ;  the 
remodelled  courts  of  justice,  196 ; 
the  judges  abandon  the  attempt  to 
exercise  their  functions,  197 ;  harsh 
treatment  of  loyalists  by  the  patriots, 
197-199 ;  triumphal  progress  of  its 
delegates  to  the  Congress  at  Philadel- 
phia, 203, 204;  Israel  Putnam's  advice 
to,  289  n. ;  reprisals  of  the  patriots 
for  Gage's  raid  on  Cambridge,  290 ; 
the  Massachusetts  Congress  adjourns 
from  Salem  to  Concord,  292 ;  prelimi- 
nary legislation  of  the  Congress,  292 ; 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  at 
work,  292;  Congressmen  aware  that 
their  arrangements  mean  rebellion, 
293 ;  Rules  and  Regulations  for  the 
Massachusetts  army,  294;  thanks- 
giving for  special  Divine  protec- 
tion, 295 ;  Committee  of  Safety  asks 
help  from  the  other  New  England 
provinces,  312 ;  strength  of  forces 
raised  by,  314;  Artemas  Ward 
appointed  to  command,  314;  Com- 
mittee  of  Safety   advise   the   occu- 


428 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


pation  of  Bunker's  Hill,  322;  con- 
gratulatory address  to  Washington 
as  Commander-in-Chief,  343 ;  pro- 
vision of  food  for  the  soldiers,  349; 
provision  of  a  fleet,  362;  furnishes 
minute-men  to  Washington  for  tem- 
porary service,  377. 

Meredith,  Sir  William,  for  the  repeal 
of  the  Townshend  duties,  123. 

Merton  College,  65. 

Middlesex  election,  the,  story  of,  161, 
230. 

Minden,  a  standard  of  desperate  fight- 
ing. 337  «• 

Ministry,  English,  the  Cabinet  decree 
that  all  judges  shall  be  paid  by 
Crown  and  not  by  colony,  134 ;  ad- 
vised by  the  directors  of  the  East 
India  Company  to  repeal  the  Tea- 
duty  as  a  sure  relief  to  the  Com- 
pany's embarrassments,  136 ;  their 
scheme  to  meet  the  tea  difficulty, 
137 ;  its  reception  by  America,  138 ; 
elimination  of  independence  and  of 
wisdom  from  the  Cabinet,  140;  pri- 
vate and  official  opinions  of  the 
King's  ministers,  142,  143 ;  they  re- 
fuse Gage  an  increased  force,  284. 
See  House  of  Commons  and  George 
the  Third. 

Mohairs,  origin  of  the  term,  113. 

Montagu,  Admiral,  132;  his  wife,  132  ; 
personal  appearance,  132  n.\  treat- 
ment of  complaints  of  sufferers 
from  the  depredations  of  Lieuten- 
ant Dudingston  of  the  Gaspee,  133 ; 
did  much  to  provoke  the  rebellion, 
360. 

Montgomery,  Richard,  killed  at  Que- 
bec, 381,  382. 

Moore,  Sir  John,  his  treatment  by  the 
King,  281. 

Moritz,  Herr,  of  Berlin,  his  experiences 
in  a  walking  tour  up  the  Thames 
Valley,  55,  56. 

Mowatt,  Captain,  bombards  Falmouth, 
Mass.,  365. 

NANCY  (royal  ordnance  brig),  capt- 
ured by  Captain  Manly,  378. 


Nantucket,  effect  upon,  of  the  bill  re 
striding  fishing,  265. 

Napoleon  the  First  at  Toulon,  393. 

Navy,  American,  its  beginnings,  361, 
362;  flag  under  which  its  ships  first 
sail,  362;  early  successes  and  disas- 
ters, 363. 

Navy,  British,  inefficiency  of,  at  the 
commencement  of  the  revolutionary 
war,  358-361 ;  burning  of  seaport 
towns,  365. 

Newcome,  Dr.,  Vice-Principal  of  Hert- 
ford, 65. 

New  England,  social  conditions  in,  60, 
61 ;  without  tribunals,  290  ;  its  Select- 
men, Committees  of  Correspondence 
and  Congress,  290;  strength  of  the 
forces  raised  by,  314 ;  quality  of  the 
men,  314;  proud  to  have  an  army 
which  can  keep  the  field,  377.  See 
various  States  and  townships. 

New  Englanders,  James  the  First 
grants  exclusive  privileges  of  fishing 
to,  263 ;  Bill  for  restricting  their  fish- 
ing grounds,  263  ;  their  judgment  on 
their  rulers,  279.     See  Americans. 

New  Hampshire,  rapid  assembly  of 
her  minute-men  in  aid  of  Massachu- 
setts, 312  ;  furnishes  Washington  with 
minute-men  for  special  service,  377. 

New  Jersey,  aspect  of,  52 ;  aid  to  the 
English  in  the  war  with  the  French 
in  America,  90. 

Newton,  Rev.  John,  59;  obtains  the 
curacy  of  Olney  with  an  allowance 
from  John  Thornton,  146;  Cowper 
becomes  a  member  of  his  family, 
146 ;  his  letters,  and  reports  on  Cow- 
per, 147-149. 

New  York,  again  buys  goods  (except 
tea)  of  England  on  the  partial  repeal 
of  the  Townshend  Act,  124;  manu- 
factures of,  126 ;  the  reception  it 
prepared  for  the  tea-ships,  138 ;  ap- 
preciation of  Lord  Dartmouth  by, 
151 ;  its  welcome  of  the  Massachu- 
setts delegates  on  their  way  to  the 
Congress  at  Philadelphia,  204. 

Norfolk,  Virginia,  its  destruction  by 
the  British  fleet,  367. 


INDEX 


429 


North,  Lord,  his  early  appreciation  of 
Fox,  3 ;  as  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, moves  the  repeal  of  duties 
levied  in  America  under  Charles 
Townshend's  Act,  except  upon  tea, 
122;  gives  his  casting  vote  for  the 
retention  of  the  Tea-duty,  123  ;  con- 
fesses to  the  King  his  belief  in  the 
calamitous  effects  of  the  system 
pursued  by  his  Government,  142; 
weakness  of  the  Opposition  in  both 
Houses  in  face  of  his  Ministry, 
156  ;  attitude  towards  the  petition 
against  Hutchinson  and  Oliver,  172; 
his  legislation  against  Massachu- 
setts, 177,  179 ;  thanks  Lord  George 
Germaine  for  his  suggestions,  178; 
pledges  himself  to  place  Boston 
seventeen  miles  from  the  sea,  192 ; 
his  orders  to  Mr.  John  Robinson  on 
the  purchase  of  seats,  212;  robbed, 
219;  receipts  of  the  Customs  and 
Excise  under  his  administration,  31 ; 
his  assertion,  in  1774,  that  the  pre- 
vious Parliament  was  a  good  one, 
229;  presents  to  the  House  letters 
from  the  governors  of  American  col- 
onies, 232 ;  moves  the  King  to  adopt 
effective  measures  to  suppress  rebel- 
lion in  the  colonies,  255 ;  recognises 
the  power  of  an  Opposition  led  by 
Fox,  258  ;  his  peace-offering  to  Fox, 
258  ;  and  Fox's  tactical  use  of  it,  258  ; 
confronted  by  the  King's  friends,  261 ; 
and  saved  by  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot,  262 ; 
orders  American  seaboard  towns  to 
be  attacked,  365.  See  Ministry, 
House  of  Commons,  and  George  the 
Third. 

OLDFIELD  (Royal  Marines),  at  Bun- 
ker's Hill  and  St.  Jean  d'Acre,  33472. 

Oliver  (Lieutenant-Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts), sets  the  home  authorities 
against  his  colony,  169 ;  petition  for 
his  removal,  172,  173 ;  entreats  Gage 
to  keep  his  troops  within  barracks, 
288 ;  forced  by  the  people  to  resign 
his  post,  288. 

Olney,  details  of  country  life  at,  147. 


Ossory,  Lord,  a  companion  of  Fox, 
10;  cited,  215;  Fox's  appeal  to  him 
to  declare  himself  conscientiously  in 
the  American  crisis,  244. 

Otis  (American  patriot),  loyalist  opin- 
ion of,  395. 

Oxford  University,  life  at,  65. 

Paine,  Thomas,  cited,  251. 

Parker,  Admiral  Sir  Peter,  at  Charles- 
ton, 385. 

Parkman,  Mr.,  quoted,  on  English 
and  colonial  officers,  in;  on  the 
New  Englanders  at  Louisburg,  271  n. 

Parliament,  English.  See  House  of 
Commons. 

Parliament,  Irish.  See  Irish  Parlia- 
ment. 

Parliamentary  History,  the,  principle 
on  which  space  was  allotted  to 
speeches  in,  256. 

Peggy  Stewart  of  London  (tea-ship  sent 
to  Annapolis),  burnt,  253. 

Penal  Acts,  184,  286. 

Pennsylvania,  aspect  0^53;  its  indus- 
tries, 126;  capacity  to  manufacture 
muskets,  254.    See  Philadelphia. 

Percy,  Lord,  cited,  213  ;  in  the  fight  at 
Lexington,  308  ;  chosen  for  the  attack 
on  Dorchester  promontory,  390 ;  his 
attack  prevented  by  a  storm,  391. 

Peters,  Dr.  Samuel  (of  Hebron,  Conn.) , 
his  partisanship,  299;  preaching  in 
England,  299 ;  his  punch-bowl,  396. 

Philadelphia,  celebrates  the  repeal  of 
the  Stamp  Act  on  George  the  Third's 
birthday,  28  ;  improvement  in,  under 
the  influence  of  Franklin,  76 ;  its  re- 
ception of  the  tea-ship,  138;  Congress 
of  the  thirteen  colonies  to  be  held  at, 
193 ;  keeping  the  first  of  June  at,  201 ; 
its  welcome  to  the  delegates  to  the 
Congress,  204;  toasts  given  at  meet- 
ings, 205 ;  Declaration  of  Rights 
drawn  up  at  the  Congress,  206 ;  Res- 
olutions passed  at  the  Congress,  233  ; 
second  Continental  Congress  at,  341. 
See  Congress. 

Phipps,  Captain  (Lord  Mulgrave), 
opposes    proposal    to  try   colonists 


43Q 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


charged  with  treason  in   England, 

106. 
Pikes  in  warfare,  374. 
Pitcairn,    Major,    killed    at    Bunker's 

Hill,  334. 
Pitt,  William.    See  Chatham,  Earl  of. 
Pitt,  William   (son  of  Chatham),  his 

description  of  Chatham's  speeches 

in    the    Lords   on    the    crisis    with 

America,  259. 
Pomeroy,   Seth,   military    experiences 

of,  301 ;  his  letter  to  the  wife  of  his 

brother  just   killed   in   battle,  301 ; 

at  Bunker's   Hill,  326,  335 ;   death, 

336. 

Portland,  Duke  of,  in  Opposition  in 
1772,  154. 

Portsmouth  (Mass.),  the  governor's 
arsenal  stormed  and  powder  carried 
off,  233. 

Post  Office,  English  letters  passing 
through,  tampered  with,  169,  170. 

Pownall,  Thomas  (Governor  of  Mas- 
sachusetts), opposes  the  proposal 
for  trial  of  treasonable  colonists  in 
England,  106;  denies  the  existence 
of  a  treasonable  Resolution  of  the 
Massachusetts  Assembly,  106  n. ; 
opposes  in  Parliament  coercion  be- 
ing applied  to  Massachusetts,  178; 
quoted,  258. 

Prescott,  Colonel,  occupies  Bunker's 
Hill,  322;  heartens  his  men  by 
courageous  example,  323  ;  reasons 
for  refusing  to  relieve  his  tired  men, 
325,  332;  offers  the  command  to 
Warren,  326 ;  difficulty  in  supplying 
his  men  with  ammunition,  331 ;  his 
conduct  in  the  retreat,  335. 

Preston,  Captain,  orders  the  military 
to  fire  on  Bostonians,  119;  on  trial 
and  acquittal,  121,  124,  180. 

Price,  Uvedale,  10. 

Priestley,  Dr.,  present  at  Wedderburn's 
denunciation  of  Franklin,  173. 

Prospect  Hill,  colonial  intrenchments 

at,  344.  347- 
Putnam,    Israel,    his  warlike    experi- 
ences, 82;  brings  aid  to  Boston,  pre- 
pared to  treat  ships  and  regiments 


from  England  as  enemies,  202;  calls 
out  the  militia  of  Connecticut,  289, 
312;  argues  for  the  fortification  of 
Charlestown  Heights,  321 ;  at  Bun- 
ker's Hill,  326,  328,  335 ;  at  work  at 
Prospect  Hill,  344;  in  camp  under 
Washington,  347;  baptizes  a  capt- 
ured mortar  by  the  name  of  "  Con- 
gress," 379;  enters  Boston  after  the 
British  evacuation,  405. 
Putnam,  James  (American  lawyer), 
simplicity  of  his  tastes,  96. 

Quebec,  failure  of  the  assault  on,  382. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  defends  Captain  Pres- 
ton on  trial  for  the  Boston  Massacre, 
121 ;  his  reply  to  his  father's  remon- 
strances in  the  matter,  121 ;  prema- 
ture death,  121  n. 

Rawdon,  Lord,  at  Bunker's  Hill,  334 ; 
subsequent  career  as  Lord  Moira 
and  Lord  Hastings,  356,  357. 

Rawlins,  William,  on  Cornish  smug- 
gling, 130  n. 

Religious  autobiography,  tendency  of, 
2. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  Fox  meets  him 
at  The  Club,  25. 

Rhode  Island,  manufactures  of,  126; 
the  authorities  by  royal  order  in 
Council  commanded  to  deliver  up 
the  burners  of  the  Gaspee,  133; 
Assembly  votes  an  army  of  observa- 
tion with  Nathaniel  Greene  as  com- 
mander, 313 ;  army  ultimately  placed 
under  Washington,  313;  strength  of 
contingent,  314;  its  fleet,  362;  and 
its  army,  370. 

Richmond,  Duke  of,  letter  from  Burke 
to,  on  the  interest  which  men  of  rank 
have  in  the  welfare  of  the  State, 
22;  Horace  Walpole's  testimony  to 
his  character,  23;  in  Opposition  in 
1772,  154;  on  Lord  Rockingham's 
timidity  of  speech  in  the  House,  155 ; 
opinion  of  Burke's  party  influence, 
159 ;  stimulated  by  Burke  to  in- 
creased Parliamentary  attendance, 
160. 


INDEX 


431 


Riedesel,  General,  voyaging  with 
Brunswick  troops  to  America,  39; 
bis  wife  rudely  treated  in  England, 

54- 

Rigby,  Richard  (Master  of  the  Rolls 
in  Ireland),  his  mode  of  life,  23;  on 
political  jobbery,  49 ;  official  appoint- 
ments and  extravagance,  50 ;  on  the 
composition  of  Rockingham's  first 
Government,  176  and  176  n.;  on 
treating  at  elections,  211;  his  com- 
ments on  Lord  North's  resolution 
fencing  with  colonial  taxation,  260; 
on  the  Colonial  Fishery  Bill,  270 ;  on 
the  consequences  of  the  repeal  of 
the  Penal  Acts,  274. 

Ripon,  Yorkshire,  anger  of  the  in- 
habitants at  the  spectacle  of  mili- 
tary flogging,  117  n. 

Robinson,  John  (Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury), Lord  North's  communications 
with  him  on  the  purchase  of  seats, 
212;  urged  by  the  King  to  set  the 
Middlesex  election  "  again  on  float," 
230. 

Rochford,  Lord,  for  the  retention  of 
the  duty  on  tea,  123. 

Rockingham,  Lord,  his  career,  24 ;  and 
colonial  legislation,  29 ;  character  of 
his  administration,  152 ;  his  silence  in 
the  House,  155 ;  Chatham  prejudiced 
against  him,  166;  opposes  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Penal  Acts,  184 ;  com- 
munications with  Burke  on  electoral 
matters,  218. 

Rockinghams,  the,  their  distaste  for 
dissipation,  23 ;  cordial  reception  of 
Fox,  24;  their  scheme  of  non-attend- 
ance, 232. 

Roxbury,  intrenchments  at,  344. 

Royal  Marines,  at  Bunker's  Hill,  328, 

33°  «• 
Royall,    Isaac    (loyalist  of  Medford), 

banished  to  England  by  the  patriots, 

199. 
Russell,  Dowager  Countess,  and  the 

Fox  MSS.,  9  n. 
Russell,  Earl  (the  late),  is  given  the 

Fox   MSS.,   8;    his   admiration   of 

Fox,  9. 


Rutland,  Duke  of,  his  reception  of  the 
news  of  his  son's  death,  142. 

Sabine,  Lorenzo,  on  the  severity 
with  which  loyalists  were  treated, 
202  n. ;  quoted,  103. 

Salem,  to  be  the  seat  of  British  ad- 
ministration instead  of  Boston,  191 ; 
meeting  of  the  Assembly  at,  193; 
offer  of  wharfage  to  Boston,  194; 
holds  town-meetings  in  spite  of 
proclamation,  196;  Colonel  Leslie's 
endeavour  to  seize  artillery  at,  302. 

Saltonstall,  Colonel  (American  loy- 
alist), takes  refuge  in  England,  198. 

Sandwich,  Admiral,  in  command  of 
the  British  squadron  in  American 
waters,  132. 

Sandwich,  Earl  of,  candidate  for  the 
High  Stewardship  of  Cambridge 
University,  65  ;  on  the  Colonial 
Fishery  Bill,  270;  relates  an  anec- 
dote imputing  cowardice  to  the 
Americans,  270;  attacks  Franklin, 
277;  favouritism  shown  by  him  in 
naval  appointments,  360. 

Savarin,  Brillat,  on  the  good  living  in 
New  England,  95. 

Savile,  Sir  George,  character  of,  23,  24; 
reasons  for  non-attendance  in  the 
House,  160;  on  the  Absentee  Irish 
Landlord  Taxation  Bill,  164;  op- 
poses coercive  legislation  against 
Massachusetts,  179. 

Sawbridge,  Alderman,  an  opponent  of 
the  North  policy,  183. 

Scotland,  parliamentary  representation 
in,  in  1775,  21 ;  as  seen  by  Franklin, 
93.  167. 

Sea  voyages  in  1768,  38,  39. 

Segur,  Comte  de,  his  impressions  of 
New  England,  53;  on  the  material 
comfort,  independence,  good  man- 
ners, and  social  conditions  of  the 
Americans,  56,  57,  61 ;  his  testimony 
in  regard  to  American  women,  98 ; 
predictions  concerning  the  future  of 
the  United  States,  99;  the  place  of 
his  family  in  literature,  99  n. 

Selwyn,  George,  his  servant  engaged 


432 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


with  Lord  Holland's  servants  in 
smuggling,  128 ;  receives  a  letter 
intended  to  perplex  Lord  Grantham, 
170;  his  price  for  the  double  seat  of 
Ludgershall,  223;  as  a  borough 
member,  225 ;  friendship  for  Lord 
Carlisle,  243 ;  his  inability  to  appre- 
ciate Fox's  higher  attributes,  244; 
his  connection  with  and  conduct  in 
Parliament,  247,  248 ;  losses  through 
Burke's  attack  on  patent  places, 
247  ;  holds  a  faro  bank,  his  gambling, 
248 ;  his  old  age,  249. 

Sewall,  Jonathan  (Attorney-General  of 
Massachusetts),  his  encouragement 
of  John  Adams,  68  ;  forced  to  fly  to 
England  by  the  patriots,  197. 

Shelburne,  Lord,  against  American 
coercion,  37 ;  resignation  of  office, 
37 ;  dates  the  deterioration  of  the 
youth  of  the  upper  classes  from  the 
advent  of  the  Foxes  at  Eton,  63 ; 
on  the  conflict  between  the  landed 
and  commercial  classes  concerning 
American  taxation,  184  n. 

Shuldham,  Admiral,  warns  Howe  that 
the  position  of  his  fleet  in  Boston 
harbour  is  untenable,  392. 

Slave  trade,  condemned  by  the  Assem- 
bly of  Virginia,  207. 

Smith,  Adam,  cited,  39;  on  wages  in 
America,  94  n. 

Smith,  Colonel,  in  command  of  the 
expedition  to  Concord,  306;  at- 
tacked at  Lexington,  306;  his  re- 
treat, 307  ;  reinforced  by  Lord 
Percy,  308. 

Smollett,  Tobias,  on  the  social  vices  of 
his  time,  46. 

Smuggling,  prevalence  of,  in  Great 
Britain,  127-129;  in  America,  130, 
136. 

Society  of  Friends,  in  Philadelphia, 
induced  to  subscribe  in  aid  of  war- 
like preparations,  77 ;  remonstrates 
on  the  restrictive  fishing  legislation, 
265. 

Somersetshire,  freeholders  pledge 
themselves  not  to  elect  the  brother 
or  son  or  nominee  of  a  peer,  224. 


Sons  of  Liberty,  the,  36. 

South  Carolina,  no  manufactures  in, 
126;  its  aid  to  Boston,  202. 

Southern  States  of  America,  the,  con- 
stitution of  society  in,  52. 

Spain,  at  war  with  England,  241. 

Spaniards,  their  abhorrence  of  flog- 
ging, 118  71. 

Springfield  (Mass.),  opening  of  the 
remodelled  courts  of  justice  at,  196. 

Stamp  Act,  the,  28,  103,  115,  182. 

Stanhope,  Lord,  attributes  the  taking 
of  Louisburg  to  the  New  Englanders, 
271  n. 

Stanley,  Captain  (son  of  Lord  Derby), 
on  the  shortness  of  rations  in  Boston 
garrison,  350. 

Stanley,  Hans,  complains  of  his  letters 
being  tampered  with,  170. 

Stark,  Colonel,  the  ammunition  served 
out  to  his  regiment,  331  n, 

Storer,  Anthony,  on  Fox's  oratory,  246 
n. ;  on  Selwyn's  gambling,  248. 

Strahan,  William  (King's  Printer), 
216;  urges  Franklin  to  revisit  Eng- 
land, 217 ;  letter  from  Franklin,  217 
n. 

Suffolk,  Earl  of,  his  message  to  Lord 
Buchan  on  the  election  of  peers  for 
Scotland,  214;  cited,  239;  censures 
Lord  Sandwich  for  his  speech  on  the 
fishery  bill,  271. 

Tea-duty,  the,  123, 187. 

Thackeray,  cited,  221  n. 

The  Liberty,  Boston  sloop,  seizure  of, 

36. 

Thomas,  General,  of  the  war  of  1861-65, 
cited,  342. 

Thomas,  General,  occupies  Dorchester 
Neck,  388 ;  again  mentioned,  399. 

Thornton,  John,  the  Evangelical  leader, 
working  with  Lord  Dartmouth  in 
schemes  for  the  betterment  of  the 
clergy,  145 ;  his  relations  with  John 
Newton,  146;  favourite  companions 
on  his  excursions,  149 ;  treasurer  of 
Dartmouth  College,  149. 

Thurlow  (Attorney-General),  denoun- 
ces the  burning  of  the  Gaspee,  133. 


INDEX 


433 


Ticonderoga,  campaign  against,  no; 
capture  of,  385. 

Townshend,  Charles,  32 ;  his  customs 
duties,  71,  104;  debate  in  Parlia- 
ment on  their  continuance,  122-124 ; 
Burke's  Biographical  account  of, 
188. 

Townshend,  Lord,  on  the  Opposition 
to  Lord  North's  Ministry,  154. 

Tronchin  (physician  at  Geneva),  15. 

Turgot,  M.,  John  Adams  at  his  table, 
57;  his  remark  on  English  policy, 
181. 

Tyler,  Professor  (of  Cornell  Univer- 
sity), on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  28  and  28  n. 

Tyranny  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
effect  of  the,  20. 

Unwin,  Mrs.,  148. 

VASSALL,  John  (loyalist,  of  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.),  confiscation  of  his 
property  by  the  patriots,  199. 

Venison,  use  of,  in  electoral  bribery, 
221. 

Verney,  Lord,  cited,  218. 

Virginia,  manufactures  in,  126;  action 
of  the  Assembly  concerning  the  pay- 
ment of  judges'  salaries,  134;  the 
first  of  June  in,  201;  condemns  the 
slave  trade,  207. 

Voltaire,  his  literary  advice  to  De 
Segur,  108  n. 

Walpole,  Horace,  on  Fox  as  a  bor- 
rower, 5 ;  his  testimony  to  the  virtues 
of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  23 ;  on 
Lord  John  Cavendish,  23  ;  estimates 
the  cost  of  living  in  England,  49 ; 
his  account  of  Washington's  speech 
at  his  first  battle,  83  ;  on  the  charac- 
ter of  the  Opposition  to  the  North 
Ministry,  155 ;  on  the  political  con- 
dition of  England  in  1771,  164 ; 
pronounces  1774  a  year  of  fine 
harangues,  178  n. ;  criticism  of  Fox, 
216 ;  on  bribery,  220,  221 ;  his  opin- 
ion of  the  House  of  1774,  222 ;  rea- 
sons for  espousing  the  American 
2F 


cause,  241 ;    on  the  size  of  Boston, 
380. 

Walter,  Dr.,  of  Boston  (loyalist),  397. 

Ward,  Artemas,  in  command  of  the 
Massachusetts  forces,  314;  against 
fortifying  Dorchester  Heights,  321; 
held  in  respect  for  his  former  ser- 
vices, 344. 

Warren,  Dr.  John,  his  description  of 
British  fortifications  at  Charlestown, 
406. 

Warren,  James  (of  Plymouth,  Mass.), 
190. 

Warren,  Joseph,  one  of  the  committee 
on  the  Boston  massacre,  120;  mem- 
ber of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
293  ;  orator  at  the  annual  celebration 
of  the  Boston  Massacre,  296 ;  in  the 
fight  at  Lexington,  309 ;  against  occu- 
pying Charlestown  Peninsula,  321 ;  of- 
fered the  command  at  Bunker's  Hill, 
326 ;  killed  in  the  fight,  335  ;  loyalist 
opinion  of,  395. 

Warren,  Sir  Peter,  quoted  by  Sand- 
wich as  an  authority,  270. 

Washington,  George,  early  years  of, 
83;  Horace  Walpole's  account  of 
words  used  by  him  at  his  first  battle, 
83 ;  observes  the  non-importation 
agreement,  104 ;  offers  relief  to  Bos- 
ton, 203  ;  at  the  first  Congress,  233 ; 
on  the  fight  at  Lexington,  309 ; 
nominated  Commander-in-Chief  of 
the  forces  of  the  United  Colonies, 
341 ;  terms  of  his  acceptance  of  the 
post,  341 ;  a  prototype  of  the  great 
generals  of  the  War  of  Secession, 
342 ;  state  of  the  American  forces 
on  his  assumption  of  the  command, 
343 ;  his  address  to  his  army,  344 ; 
devises  a  regulation  costume  for  the 
army,  345,  346 ;  enforces  religious 
observances  in  camp,  347 ;  and  dis- 
cipline and  morality,  348 ;  his  com- 
missariat, 349;  arrival  of  the  South- 
ern riflemen  in  aid,  354 ;  remon- 
strates with  Gage  on  his  treatment 
of  colonial  officer  prisoners,  358 ; 
prime  mover  in  the  creation  of  a 
national  fleet,  362;   pronounces  the 


434 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


burning  of  Falmouth  and  Norfolk 
to  be  flaming  arguments  for  separa- 
tion, 367 ;  a  decreasing  army,  370 ; 
his  scheme  for  raising  twenty-six 
regiments  for  a  twelvemonth  certain, 
371 ;  his  difficulty  with  the  appoint- 
ment of  officers,  371 ;  stops  the  Con- 
necticut Militia  from  leaving  before 
their  time,  372 ;  want  of  arms,  cloth- 
ing, and  supplies,  373 ;  short  of  pow- 
der, 374;  refuses  to  employ  bows 
and  arrows,  374 ;  pikes  used  in  his 
army,  374 ;  despondent,  375 ;  consid- 
ers his  force  inadequate  for  the  as- 
sault of  Boston,  375 ;  his  major-gen- 
erals and  brigadiers  agree  with  him 
thereon,  376;  has  troubles  with  the 
provincial  assemblies,  376;  his  con- 
stancy rewarded,  improved  supply 
of  ammunition,  378,  379;  his  re- 
marks on  the  King's  speech,  380; 
advised  by  his  military  council  not 
to  assault  Boston,  381 ;  devises  a 
scheme  to  force  the  British  to  sur- 
render Boston  or  to  attack  him,  383; 
provided  with  heavy  guns  and  mili- 
tary material,  385,  386;  issues  an 
appeal  to  his  army,  387;  occupies 
Dorchester  promontory,  388 ;  re- 
fuses to  give  the  signal  for  Put- 
nam's forward  movement,  391 ;  forces 
the  British  to  evacuate  Boston,  393 ; 
loyalist  opinion  of,  396 ;  implored  by 
the  Selectmen  not  to  oppose  the 
British  evacuation  of  Boston,  401 ; 
his  reply,  401 ;  on  the  condition  of 
Boston  after  the  British  evacuation, 
405, 406. 

Watson,  George  (of  Plymouth,  Mass.), 
refuses  to  qualify  as  councillor,  194. 

Wedderburn,  Alexander  (Solicitor- 
General,  afterwards  Lord  Lough- 
borough), opposes  the  petition  to 
remove  Hutchinson  and  Oliver,  173 ; 
makes  a  personal  attack  on  Franklin, 
173 ;  effect  of  his  harangue,  174 ; 
dedication  of  new  edition  of  Frank- 
lin's pamphlet  to  him,  174 ;  •  speech 
on  Fox's  amendment  on  the  motion 


for  suppressing  colonial  rebellion, 
256. 

Wesley,  early  persecution  of,  145 ;  ap- 
peal to  ministers  of  the  establish- 
ment for  mutual  good-will  and  united 
effort,  145. 

Weymouth,  Lord,  for  the  retention  of 
the  Tea-duty,  123. 

Whig  party,  the  apathy  of,  in  Opposi- 
tion, 152-161 ;  Burke's  severe  cen- 
sure of  their  selfish  indifference  to 
public  interests,  161 ;  their  relation 
to  Wilkes,  161 ;  their  schemes  of 
parliamentary  reform  opposed  by 
Burke,  162;  oppose  taxation  of  ab- 
sentee Irish  landlords,  163  ;  their 
resentment  at  Chatham's  abandon- 
ment of  the  theoretical  right  to  tax 
America,  238. 

Whitefield,  refused  the  use  of  pulpits 
in  Philadelphia,  yj ;  compass  of  his 
voice  in  preaching,  79;  persecution 
of,  in  the  outset  of  his  religious 
career,  145. 

Whitehead,  William  (Poet  Laureate), 
his  verses  on  the  King's  birthday, 
233 ;  his  "  Epistle  on  the  Danger  of 
Writing  in  Verse,"  234. 

Wilkes,  as  a  popular  hero,  26,  162; 
prayed  for  at  Olney,  147 ;  in  the 
Parliament  of  1774,  229,  230. 

Williams  and  Stewart,  consignees  at 
Annapolis  of  the  Peggy  Stewart  tea- 
ship,  compelled  to  burn  tea  and  ship, 

253. 

Williamsburg  (Virginia),  the  head- 
master of  grammar-school,  refuses  to 
preach  a  sermon  to  the  convention 
at  Williamsburg,   233. 

Wilmington,  its  aid  to  Boston, 
202. 

Women  loyalists,  their  considerate 
treatment  by  the  patriots,  199. 

Worcester  (Mass.),  resignation  of  a 
seat  at  the  council  board  by  a  towns- 
man, 194;  opening  of  the  remodelled 
courts  of  justice,  196. 

Young,  Arthur,  59. 


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